Shelf. 



PRINCETON,    N.    J.                        "^ 

BR   85    .P53    1886 

Phelps,    Austin,    1820-1890. 

My  study 

BY    THE    SAME    AUTHOR. 


"  To  the  treatment  of  his  subject  Dr.  Phelps  brings  such 
q7ialiJicatio7is  as  very  feiu  men  now  livi>ig  possess.  He  is 
one  of  those  natures  ivhich  are  i7istinctively  critical,  and  yet 
full  of  -what  Matthew  Arnold  happily  calls  ^ sweet  reason- 
ableness.' " 

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MY  STUDY 


AND     OTHER    ESSAYS 


B3 


AUSTIN  PHELPS,   D.D. 

PROFESSOR   EMERITUS    IN  ANDOVER   THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1886 


Copyright,  1885,  by 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


ELECTROTTPED  AND  PRINTED 

BY    RAND,    AVERY,    &   COMPANY, 

BOSTON,  MASS. 


vxr  V  r\r.n  n.~ 


PEErAOE. 


The  discussions  contaiDed  in  this  volume  are  in 
great  part  republished  from  various  periodicals.  They 
have  been  so  greatly  enlarged,  however,  that  nearly 
one-half  of  the  material  is  new.  The  large  space 
given  to  the  subject  of  future  retribution  and  kindred 
themes,  is  the  natural  sequence  of  the  revival  of 
public  interest  in  them  in  recent  years.  Some  rep- 
etitions of  thought  will  be  observed,  which  could 
scarcely  have  been  avoided  in  essays  of  this  kind 
which  do  not  profess  to  be  a  continuous  treatise. 
Such  material  has  been  eliminated  wherever  it  could  be 
without  damage  to  the  argument  in  hand.  The  author 
can  give  no  better  reason  for  this  republication  than 
the  request  of  many  correspondents,  strangers  to  him, 
and  the  hope  that  the  enlargement  of  the  essa3^s  may 
render  them  more  helpful  to  minds  interested  in  the 
class  of  subjects  to  which  they  belong. 

iii 


COlfTElSrTS. 


NUMBER  PAGB 

I.    My  Study  (I.) 1 

II.    My  Study  (II.) 13 

III.  My  Study  (III.) 27 

IV.  Vibratory  Progress  in  Religious  Beliefs  .    .  31 
V.    Oscillations  of  Faith  in  Future  Retribution,  42 

VI.    Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere    .    .  53 

VII.    St.  Paul  on  Retribution 69 

VIII.    Correctives    of   Popular   Faith  in   Retribu- 
tion (I.) 84 

IX.    Correctives   of    Popular   Faith   in    Retribu- 
tion (II.) 97 

X.    Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason  (I.)      .    .  Ill 

XI.    Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason  (II.)    .    .  125 

XII.    Endless  Sin  under  the  Government  of  God  .  138 

XIII.  The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Probation  .    .    .  154 

XIV,  Scholastic  Theories  of  Inspiration 169 

XV.    The   New-England    Clergy   and   the   Anti- 
slavery  Reform  (I.) 179 

XVI.    The   New-England    Clergy    and    the   Anti- 
slavery  Reform  (II.) 194 

XVII.    Massachusetts  and  the  Quakers 214 

XVIII.    Does  the  World  move  ? 232 

V 


vi  Contents, 

NUMBER  PAGE 

XIX.  Is  THE  Christian  Life  worth  living?  ....  245 
XX.  A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church  (I.)   .    .    .  262 
XXI.  A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church  (II.) .    .    .  273 
XXII.  Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living  .    .    .  288 
XXIII.  Why  do  I  believe  Christianity  to  be  a  Reve- 
lation FROM  God  ? 309 


MT    STUDY. 


My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 


I. 

MY  STUDY. 

PAET  I. 


It  has  been  my  lot  to  live  for  tliirty  j^ears  on  a 
spot  which  has  been  the  scene  of  a  great,  though 
unwritten,  history.  At  the  time  when  Anclover 
Seminary  was  founded,  as  is  well  known,  the  old 
faith  of  New  England  was  decadent.  Its  stanch 
friends  were  few.  But  one  of  the  old  churches  of 
Boston  was  loyal  to  it.  Even  that  one  was  of  the 
school  which,  in  the  church-history  of  Scotland, 
is  significantly  titled  "  moderate."  Its  aged  pastor 
was  not  the  man  to  lift  up  a  fallen  banner,  and 
lead  a  forlorn  hope.  A  few  godly  men  resolved 
that  there  should  be  one  school  of  biblical  learn- 
ing in  New  England  where  a  coUegiately  educated 
and  orthodox  clergy  could  be  trained  for  the  de- 
fense of  the  theology  of  the  Pilgrims. 

The  "house  I  live  in"  was  one  of  those  built 
for  the  professors  of  the  new  "divinity  school." 

1 


2  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

Its  occupant,  in  his  daily  walk  to  his  lecture-room, 
leaped  from  stone  to  stone  through  the  swamp  of 
a  whortleberry  lot  in  which  Phillips  Hall  stood. 
The  driver  of  the  daily  stage  to  the  metropolis 
used  to  point  out  to  his  merry  passengers  the 
hillock  on  which  the  hall  was  erected  as  "  Brim- 
stone Hill,"  in  token  of  the  fiery  and  nauseous 
theology  which  he  had  been  told  was  taught  there. 
The  tradition  is,  that  one  of  the  passengers  on  a 
wintry  day  responded  by  thrusting  his  hands  out 
of  the  window,  as  if  to  warm  them  at  a  blazing 
fire.  The  sobriquet  followed  Dr.  Griffin  to  the  pas- 
torate, to  which  he  was  soon  called,  of  the  Park- 
street  Church  in  Boston.  "Brimstone  Corner" 
was  the  polite  and  fragrant  cognomen  which  the 
angle  of  Tremont  and  Park  Streets  bore  in  the 
popular  dialect  of  the  time. 

The  late  Charles  Stoddard,  Esq.,  of  Boston,  for 
many  years  the  senior  deacon  of  the  Old  South 
Church,  has  told  me  that  he  was  more  than  once 
crowded  off  the  sidewalk  by  well-dressed  enemies 
of  his  faith  while  leading  his  mission  school  to 
church  on  a  Sunday  morning.  It  was  not  the  first 
nor  the  last  time  that  "  fanatics  "  have  found  that 
they  had  no  rights  which  "  gentlemen  "  were  bound 
to  respect.  A  drayman  in  Tremont  Street,  who 
had  missed  his  way  with  a  load  of  sulphur,  was 
once  directed  by  a  gentleman,  of  whom  he  made 
inquiry  at  a  crossing,  to  go  and  deliver  his  freight 
at  the  house  of  a  man  by  the  name  of  Griffin 
which  he  would  find  on  the  door-plate,  for  "he 


My  Study.  3 

was  the  chief  dealer  in  the  article  in  the  city  of 
Boston." 

So  general  and  intense  was  the  antipathy  to  the 
ancient  faith,  that  it  swayed  the  learned  profes- 
sions, and  gave  tone  to  cultivated  society.  Young 
men  beginning  the  practice  of  law  or  medicine  in 
Boston  found  that  they  lost  caste  by  attending  an 
Orthodox  church.  When  Andover  Seminary  was 
founded,  it  was  doubtful  whether  a  charter  could 
be  obtained  from  the  Legislature.  The  institution 
was  therefore  attached  as  an  annex  to  Phillips 
Academy,  which  already  had  a  charter.  Ten  years 
later,  when  Amherst  College  was  founded  in  the 
interest  of  the  same  religious  views  with  those 
represented  at  Andover,  the  petition  for  a  charter 
was  again  and  again  refused.  The  same  was  true 
when  a  charter  was  sought  for  the  American  Board 
for  Foreign  Missions. 

The  bitterness  of  that  controversy  was  no  more 
acrid  than  that  which  commonly  attends  the  be- 
ginnings of  religious  disruptions.  But  such  were 
the  spirits  in  the  air  of  Massachusetts  when  Dr. 
Griffin  was  called  to  Andover.  In  the  building  of 
his  study  he  had  a  magnificent  ideal  of  a  worlcing- 
room  for  a  studious  recluse.  It  filled  the  southern 
wing  of  the  house.  The  morning  sun  greeted  its 
eastern  windows ;  the  noonday  sun  gave  it  good 
cheer  as  he  traveled  southward;  and  the  setting 
sun  flooded  it  with  a  golden  glory,  in  which  few 
horizons  equal  that  of  Andover.  The  glow  which 
illumined  it  from  sun  to  sun  was  a  fit  emblem  of 


4  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

the  light  which  was  to  go   from   it   around   the 
world. 

Dr.  Griffin  never  occupied  it.  He  was  called 
to  the  pulpit  of  the  Park-street  Church  just  as  he 
was  about  to  take  possession.  Dr.  Porter,  his  suc- 
cessor, was  a  lifelong  invalid.  Meetings  of  the 
faculty  and  others  for  conference  were  therefore 
held  in  his  study.  Thus  the  spot  became  memo- 
rable. The  few  leading  minds  who  felt  the  gravity 
of  the  crisis  in  the  history  of  our  churches  felt, 
also,  the  need  of  concentration  of  resources  and 
of  mutual  alliance.  For  this  purpose  they  estab- 
lished, in  1812,  a  weekly  meeting  for  prayer  and 
consultation.  Its  chief  object  was  to  devise  ways 
and  means  of  lifting  the  old  faith  of  New  England 
from  the  obsolescence  into  which  it  was  falling. 
Then,  as  now,  men  called  it  "moribund."  There 
are  things  which  thrive  in  dying.  That  meeting 
was  continued  for  many  years,  and  was  generally 
held  in  Dr.  Porter's  study.  I  find  evidence  of  but 
one  occasion  on  which  it  was  held  elsewhere. 

During  all  that  time  that  little  conclave  at  An- 
dover  was  the  center  of  New-England  Calvinism. 
Its  regular  attendants  were  seven :  Dr.  Woods ; 
Professor  Stuart;  Dr.  Porter;  Samuel  Farrar,  Esq., 
who  was  then  the  treasurer  of  the  seminary,  and 
one  of  the  lay-theologians  of  the  time ;  Dr.  John 
Adams,  father  of  the  late  Rev.  WiUiam  Adams, 
D.D.,  of  New  York,  and  then  principal  of  Phillips 
Academy ;  Dr.  Justin  Edwards,  the  youthful  pastor 
of  the  Old  South  Church  in  Andover ;  and  Mark 


My  Study,  5 

Newman,  Esq.,  its  senior  deacon.  To  these  should 
be  added,  as  occasional  guests.  Dr.  Griffin  of  Bos- 
ton ;  Dr.  Pierson  of  Andover ;  Dr.  Worcester  of 
Salem  ,•  Dr.  Morse  of  Charlestown ;  Dr.  Spring  of 
Newburyport ;  and,  at  a  later  period,  Dr.  Wisner 
of  the  Old  South  Church  in  Boston ;  and  Jeremiah 
Evarts,  "  the  silent  man,"  father  of  the  present 
Hon.  William  M.  Evarts  of  New  York.  These 
came,  as  occasion  called  them,  to  consult  with  the 
wise  men  on  "  Brimstone  Hill." 

In  that  thoughtful  and  devout  conference  were 
started  the  germs  of  great  ideas.  Here,  as  I  write, 
those  grave  and  reverend  men  seem  to  sit  around 
me  in  grand  council.  I  see  their  earnest  faces. 
I  hear  their  awe-struck  voices  as  they  kneel  in 
prayer.  I  listen  to  their  solid  and  growing  thought 
as  they  talk  of  fruitful  schemes,  and  throw  out 
spontaneously  the  seed-thoughts  of  institutions 
which  are  to  take  their  place  in  God's  plans  for 
building  states  and  redeeming  nations. 

There  sits  Dr.  Woods,  slow  and  bland  in  speech, 
wise  in  counsel,  safe  in  act,  and  masterly  in  com- 
promise. Here  stands  or  walks  about,  peering  at 
the  books,  Professor  Stuart,  on  whom,  as  he  used 
to  say,  "  The  doctorate  would  never  stick."  He  is 
quick  in  movement,  original  in  plan,  and  intrepid 
in  execution.  The  same  mercurial  traits  ajDpear 
in  his  professional  character  which  made  him  the 
most  agile  athlete  in  Yale  College  fifteen  years 
before.  His  alert  mind  keeps  his  tall,  gaunt  body 
in  incessant  motion.     His  head  is  never  still.     He 


6  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

rises  to  shut  the  door  if  it  is  open,  and  to  open  it 
if  it  is  shut,  or  to  work  off  the  overplus  of  nerve 
by  a  needless  thrust  at  the  fire.  He  hurries  on 
the  business  lest  he  should  not  live  to  see  it 
matured.  He  is  one  of  the  chronic  invalids  who 
live  in  daily  lookout  for  death,  and  who  disappoint 
themselves  by  living  as  he  did  beyond  the  full 
threescore  and  ten. 

Dr.  Porter  presides,  erect,  vigilant,  and  urbane. 
He  is  precise  to  a  fault  in  the  proprieties  of  time 
and  place.  His  hollow  cough  is  premonitory  of 
the  end  yet  twenty  years  away.  Dr.  Justin  Ed- 
wards, of  tall,  angular  frame,  which  moves  like  an 
ox,  is  silent  till  all  the  rest  have  had  their  say. 
Then  he  sums  up  the  gist  of  the  matter  in  a  few 
terse  words,  which  give  the  practical  outcome  of 
the  business  in  hand.  His  colleagues  recognize  in 
his  remarks  the  very  wisdom  they  would  have  said 
if  they  had  thought  to  put  it  so.  There  are  men 
who  are  created  to  be  chairmen  of  committees. 
They  are  born  executives.  As  such  they  are  great 
men.  Other  things  they  do  —  as  they  do.  Dr. 
Edwards  was  one  of  them.  Had  he  been  bred  to 
the  bar,  he  would  have  found  his  way  to  the  bench. 
In  ancient  Athens  he  would  have  been  one  of  the 
Amphictyonic  Council. 

Great  and  good  men  invite  caricature.  The 
world  does  not  caricature  imbeciles.  I  remember 
seeing  in  my  youth  a  rude  woodcut  representing 
the  three  leading  spirits  of  the  Andover  Seminary. 
It  portrayed  their  differences,  if  not  reverently, 


My  Study.  7 

yet  not  untrutlifiilly.  As  I  recall  it,  after  forty 
years,  it  pictured  a  huge,  clumsy  machine,  such 
as  was  then  used  for  winnowing  wheat.  Dodtors 
Porter  and  Woods  and  Professor  Stuart  are  hard 
at  work  with  it,  dressed  in  th-e  professional  robe 
and  bands.  Dr.  Woods  is  carefully,  yet  smilingly, 
as  if  he  entered  into  the  joke  of  the  thing,  drop- 
ping into  the  hopper  pumpkins  of  goodly  size, 
which  have  a  rude  carving  on  them  of  human 
faces.  They  remind  one  of  the  Jack-o'-lanterns 
we  used  to  carve  with  jack-knives  in  harvest  time 
when  the  pumpkin-fields  were  golden.  Dr.  Porter 
is  picking  them  up  with  stately  bend  as  they  roll 
out  from  below  in  the  form  of  little  preachers, 
also  full  dressed  in  canonical  bands  and  robe  ;  and 
lie  daintily  brushes  off  the  dust  with  a  whisk- 
broom.  Professor  Stuart  is  working  with  might 
and  main,  with  the  impetuous  look  of  a  man  who 
is  putting  his  whole  soul  into  it,  turning  the 
crank,  and  bending  almost  double.  To  use  his 
own  favorite  phrase,  he  is  '•Hotus  in  iUis."  Dr. 
Woods  exclaims  with  anxious  drawl,  "  Not-so-fast, 
Broth-er  Stu-art,  not-so-fast !  "  The  professor 
replies  with  a  jerk,  "  Work  away !  work  away  I " 
Such  were  the  pleasantries  behind  which  conflict 
was  going  on  in  dead  earnest. 

The  caricatures  of  an  age,  like  its  coins,  are 
signs  of  its  most  truthful  history.  These  men 
could  afford  to  be  caricatured.  We  may  be  very 
sure  that  they  did  not  look  glum  over  it.  Grave 
men  they  were,  who  took  life  intensely ;  but  they 


8  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

were  not  of  tliat  class  of  devotees  who,  in  a  parox- 
ysm of  remorse,  resolve  that  they  will  never  laugh 
again.  They  were  of  too  robust  grain  to  be  men 
of  disconsolate  and  despotic  conscience.  They 
were  believers  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  they  took  it  literally  that  "  fhere  is  a 
time  to  laugh."  They  were  men  before  they  were 
theologians ;  and  they  had  their  comic  side,  like 
other  men.  They  suffered  no  paralysis  of  the  ris- 
ible muscles.  Dr.  Porter  I  never  saw :  he  had 
passed  on  before  my  time.  But  from  what  I  know 
of  the  other  two,  and  of  their  associates  in  the 
Andover  Council,  I  can  readily  imagine  that  they 
at  some  time  relieved  the  gravity  of  their  long 
session  by  a  canvass  of  the  uncouth  picture,  and 
a  hearty  laugh  over  the  likenesses  so  truth-telling 
of  their  leaders. 

Since  the  foregoing  paragraph  was  written,  I 
have  been  informed  of  an  incident  which  confirms 
it,  and  which  discloses  a  new  side  to  the  character 
of  Dr.  Woods.  On  one  occasion  he  was  seen 
standing  before  a  shop-window  in  Cornhill,  exam- 
ining this  same  caricature  of  himself  and  his  col- 
leagues. He  was  so  intent  ujDon  it,  that  he  did 
not  at  first  perceive  the  approach  of  Dr.  Ware,  — 
his  chief  opponent  in  the  controversy  of  the  time, 
—  who  came  up  behind  him.  Dr.  Ware  at  length 
tapped  him  on  the  shoulder,  and  said,  "  Good- 
morning,  Dr.  Woods.  I  see  that  you  have  a  new 
machine  at  Andover,  by  which  you  manufacture 
Orthodox  ministers  out  of  pumpkins."  —  "  Ye-s," 


My  Study,  9 

said  Dr.  Woods,  with  his  inimitable  deliberation 
of  utterance,  "  ye-s :  don't-you-want-to-come- 
up-there,  and-be-ground-over  ?  "  The  sequence 
need  not  be  told.  Good-nature  diluted  the  bitter- 
ness of  that  honorable  warfare  on  both  sides. 

Those  ancient  men  builded  better  than  they 
knew,  and  some  of  them  knew  a  great  deal.  Like 
all  religiously  earnest  men,  they  thought  and 
planned  and  acted  for  far-off  coming  time.  Their 
life  was  energized  by  their  faith  that  this  world 
is  to  be  converted  to  Jesus  Christ.  Their  hands 
were  on  the  wheels  of  its  destiny,  and  they  knew 
it.  They  felt  the  prophetic  thrill  of  it  in  every 
nerve.  They  had  faith  in  themselves  as  men 
chosen  of  God  to  apostolic  service.  There  are 
men  in  the  service  of  the  Church  whom  the  Church 
lifts:  there  are  other  men  who  lift  the  Church. 
Those  Andover  pioneers  were  of  the  latter  class. 
They  had  a  work  of  construction  and  of  forecast 
to  do,  and  they  did  it  with  a  will. 

It  is  said  that  every  great  discovery  is  a  pre- 
sentiment in  somebody's  mind  before  it  is  a  fact 
in  recorded  science.  That  Andover  company  con- 
tained minds  of  the  premonitory  order.  They  were 
in  profound  sympathy  with  the  biblical  future  of 
this  world.  When  the  prophetic  book  was  un- 
sealed, they  were  ready  with  the  ways  and  means 
for  executing  its  decrees.  Had  they  been  prophets, 
and  sons  of  prophets,  they  could  not  have  entered 
into  the  spirit  of  the  opening  age  more  cordially  or 
more  intelligently.    Their  life's  work  was  prophecy 


10  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

fulfilled.  They  worked  as  all  great  workers  do, 
in  line  with  hidden  providences  and  supernatural 
forces. 

It  was  in  that  conference  in  Dr.  Porter's  study, 
that  the  project  of  American  missions  to  the  hea- 
then first  took  the  visible  and  tangible  form  which 
gave  rise  to  the  American  Board.  Judson,  Nott, 
Newell,  and  Mills,  the  pioneer  missionaries,  were 
in  the  seminary.  Their  petition  to  the  General 
Association  of  Massachusetts  for  support  in  their 
resolve  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  heathen  was 
drawn  up  by  the  advice  of  the  Andover  brethren 
in  council,  who  sent  two  of  their  number  to  advo- 
cate it  before  the  fathers  at  Bradford.  It  is  sig- 
nificant of  the  wary  enterprise  which  it  was 
thought  necessary  to  practice  in  broaching  the 
subject,  that  the  names  of  Rice  and  Richards, 
which  were  at  first  appended  to  the  memorial, 
were  struck  off,  lest  the  Association  should  be 
alarmed  by  too  large  a  number. 

It  is  only  in  the  beginnings  of  great  movements 
that  a  timid  dijDlomacy  sways  action.  When  the 
idea  central  to  the  movement  gets  possession  of 
the  popular  mind,  it  goes  with  a  rush.  In  the 
multitude  of  counselors  all  feel  safe.  Grooves  of 
destiny  begin  to  appear,  and  safety  insures  speed. 
Such  was  the  early  history  of  American  missions. 
The  prophetic  thought  at  Andover  anticipated 
what  was  coming.  The  group  behind  the  hay- 
stack at  Williamstown  had  adjourned  to  Andover, 
to  find  their  plans  matured,  and  purpose  deepened, 


My  Study.  11 

by  the  inspiration  which  came  from  Dr.  Porter's 
study. 

One  feature  of  the  movement  is  significant  of 
the  moral  pressure  under  which  both  the  missiona- 
ries and  their  advisers  acted.  Under  the  guidance 
of  their  Andover  counselors,  the  young  mission- 
aries did  not  leave  their  going  to  the  heathen 
dependent  on  the  readiness  of  the  Massachusetts 
churches  to  send  them.  Their  going  was  a  foregone 
conclusion.  Go  they  must :  it  was  fore-ordained. 
If  Massachusetts  had  not  consecrated  wealth 
enough  to  send  them,  the  Lord  had.  Could  not 
God  raise  up  men  after  his  own  heart  from  the 
very  stones  in  the  streets  of  Bradford? 

What  was  the  secret  of  the  intense  conviction 
in  the  Andover  conclave,  that  the  gospel  must  be 
preached  to  the  darkened  nations  ?  It  was  their 
faith  that  this  is  a  lost  world.  Without  Christ  it 
is  doomed.  They  saw  in  vision  the  long  proces- 
sion of  heathen  souls  unsaved  passing  on  into  a 
lost  eternity.  They  were  wakened  to  a  great  exi- 
gency. It  brooked  no  delay.  No  dream  of  hea- 
then probation  after  death  blurred  the  vividness 
of  their  faith.  Whatever  may  be  true  on  that 
subject,  their  faith  was  fixed.  They  were  a  unit 
in  it.  So  were  the  founders  of  the  seminary  and 
the  churches  of  Massachusetts.  The  whole  splen- 
did structure  of  American  missions  to  the  heathen, 
with  its  magnificent  history  of  achievement,  had 
its  origin  in  a  profound,  undoubting,  intense,  and 
unanimous  belief  that  heathen  probation  began 
and  ended  here. 


12  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

Was  the  Andover  Creed  silent  about  it?  It 
said  as  little  of  the  Book  of  Mormon.  Polygamy 
could  as  normally  be  taught  under  its  sanction  as 
the  discovery  of  a  second  probation.  They  were 
silent  where  they  saw  no  reason  to  speak.  They 
were  practical  men.  It  is  not  the  way  with  prac- 
tical men  to  build  cob  houses  of  defense  against 
errors  of  which  nobody  has  ever  dreamed.  Their 
action  said  more  than  their  polemic  words.  It 
discloses  where  and  how  the  wheels  of  their  sys- 
tem of  beliefs  interlocked.  Their  whole  missionary 
policy  revolved  around  their  faith  in  the  restriction 
of  heathen  probation  to  this  one  life  in  this  one 
world.  Without  that  faith,  that  whole  chapter  in 
the  history  of  those  times  would  have  been  a  fable. 
Those  pioneer  missionaries  would  have  sought  pas- 
torates in  the  Green  Mountains  and  among  the 
hills  of  Berkshire.  Their  advisers  in  the  Andover 
Conference  would  have  rolled  up  the  map  of  the 
heathen  world,  and  put  it  away  for  ever. 

They  were  not  so  taught  of  God.  Their  intense 
faith  disclosed  itself  in  a  monumental  work  which 
continues  to  this  day.  Had  it  been  the  whole  life's 
work  of  those  seven  men  to  bring  into  organized 
being  the  ideal  of  American  missions  to  the  hea- 
then, they  would  have  lived  in  the  history  of  the 
millennium  ;  but  that  was  not  the  whole. 


n. 

MY  STUDY. 
PART  n. 

I  HAVE  told  the  story  of  the  way  in  which  my 
study  became  memorable  in  the  history  of  the 
Massachusetts  churches,  and  of  its  tribute  to  the 
organization  of  American  missions  to  the  heathen. 
Other  institutions  followed  in  natural  sequence. 

Here  was  originated  the  American  Monthly  Con- 
cert of  Prayer  for  the  conversion  of  the  world. 
Something  similar  to  it  in  Scotland  had  caught  the 
eye  of  the  Andover  watchmen  in  their  lookout  for 
new  ideas.  It  was  talked  over  and  prayed  over  in 
this  place.  Grave  doubts  were  expressed.  Would 
the  churches  feel  interest  enough  in  the  heathen 
to  meet  and  pray  for  them  once  a  month?  The 
resolve  to  send  four  missionaries  abroad  was  re- 
garded by  many  as  a  doubtful  movement.  Dr. 
Dwight,  president  of  Yale  College,  thought  it  un- 
wise. So  grave  had  the  responsibility  seemed,  to 
those  who  must  bear  it,  that  one  who  was  present 
when  the  memorial  of  the  young  missionaries  was 
read,  says,  "  We  all  held  our  breath."  At  the  first 
meeting  of  the  American  Board  at  Farmington, 

13 


14  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

a  private  parlor  held  all  who  were  in  attendance. 
They  were  just  six  persons.  The  prospect  was 
not  cheering  to  men  of  little  faith. 

What  to  do  at  a  monthly  concert  to  give  it  a 
distinctive  character  was  an  open  question.  One 
pastor  of  those  times,  in  relating  his  pastoral  remi- 
niscences, said,  "  At  our  first  monthly  concert  we 
could  think  of  nothing  to  do  but  to  read  the  clos- 
ing proj)hecies  of  Isaiah."  Even  the  missionary 
hymn  was  not  then  known  to  the  American 
churches.  Would  the  missions  achieve  success 
enough  to  sustain  such  a  concert  ?  If  they  failed, 
what  would  be  the  effect  of  the  re-action  ?  The 
heathen  were  a  great  way  off.  The  experiment 
was  a  novelty.  It  had  no  history  of  success  to 
reason  from.  Would  it  not  be  wise  to  wait  until 
it  had  ? 

The  wise  men  of  Andover  saw  the  two  sides  of 
things.  But  they  were  not  of  dilatory  habit  when 
the  balance  was  once  struck.  They  had  committed 
themselves  at  Bradford  to  the  project  of  missions 
to  the  heathen,  and  now  the  way  to  create  a  his- 
tory of  success  was  to  back  them  up  by  concerted 
prayer.  Any  thing  must  succeed  which  was  sup- 
ported by  supernatural  auxiliaries.  So  they  rea- 
soned. A  circular  was  sent  forth  to  the  churches, 
and  the  monthly  concert  found  an  unexpected 
welcome. 

Where  else  in  the  wide  world  did  so  grand  and 
far-reaching  an  institution  ever  spring  from  a  be- 
ginning so  diminutive  ?     Seven  men,  unknown  to 


My  Study.  15 

fame,  meet  for  a  plain  talk  in  a  private  house  in  a 
country-town  of  Massachusetts,  and  their  plain 
talk  soon  weaves  an  electric  network  of  concerted 
prayer  around  the  globe.  Response  comes  from 
the  islands  of  Pacific  seas,  and  rejoinder  from 
Constantinople  and  "  flowery  Ispahan." 

The  monthly  concert  was  followed  by  the  an- 
nual Concert  of  Prayer  for  Colleges.  This  also  was 
one  of  the  creative  ideas  which  went  forth  from 
Dr.  Porter's  study.  When  we  recall  the  religious 
awakenings  in  our  colleges  which  have  so  often  fol- 
lowed that  anniversary,  beginning  at  the  very  hour 
of  its  observance,  we  can  not  but  revere  the  inspi- 
ration which  put  that  thought  into  the  minds  of 
the  men  who  gathered  in  this  place  to  inquire  of 
God.  That  idea  of  the  combination  of  the  forces 
of  prayer  for  world-wide  objects  became  from  that 
time  fixed  in  the  spiritual  policy  of  our  churches. 
Then  we  first  discovered  what  reduplicated  power 
concert  gives  to  religious  enterprise.  Concert  in 
prayer  reproduced  itself  in  concerted  action.  It 
was  enough  to  crown  any  man's  life's  work  to 
initiate  that  conception  as  an  executive  factor  in 
Christian  history.  It  is  the  most  significant  illus- 
tration on  record  of  the  spiritual  unity  of  the 
Church,  and  of  its  command  of  invisible  resources. 

In  1813  one  of  that  vigilant  band  met  with  a 
little  book  which  interested  him  by  its  compression 
of  large  materials  into  little  space  and  portable 
form.  The  thought  struck  him,  that  religious  lit- 
erature  may  be   made   cheaper  in  cost,  and   cir- 


16  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

culated  widely.  He  laid  the  matter  before  the 
Andover  fraternity,  and  soon  it  grew  into  work- 
ing-shape in  the  New-England  Tract  Society. 
Andover  was  the  seat  of  its  operations  till  1825, 
when  it  became  the  American  Tract  Society  at  New 
York. 

A  little  incident  has  come  to  my  knowledge 
which  illustrates  the  range  of  forethought,  from 
great  to  small,  and  from  small  to  great,  which  char- 
acterized the  enterprise  of  those  men.  Professor 
Stuart  was  then  just  at  the  outset  of  his  splendid 
career  as  the  Father  of  Biblical  Literature  in 
America.  He  was  absorbed  in  the  construction  of 
Hebrew  grammars  and  the  conquest  of  German 
learning.  He  was  teaching  his  own  printers  to 
set  up  Hebrew  types.  Yet  he  found  time  to  super- 
vise the  first  edition  of  American  tracts,  and  he 
writes  to  the  binder  to  be  sure  and  make  the  cov- 
ers attractive  to  the  reader.  He  believed  with 
George  Herbert,  that  nothing  is  small  in  God's  ser- 
vice ;  and.  so  said  they  all. 

Dr.  Porter  was  the  son  of  the  Hon.  Judge  Por- 
ter of  Tinmouth,  Vt.  On  one  of  his  visits  to  his 
father,  he  heard  of  a  little  local  society  for  the 
aid  of  young  men  in  their  education  for  the  min- 
istry. He  called  to  it  the  attention  of  the  next 
conference  at  Andover.  There,  as  usual,  the  idea 
from  the  Green  INIountains  expanded  into  that  of 
a  national  organization.  A  meeting  was  called  in 
Boston,  at  which  four  of  the  Andover  professors 
were  appointed  to  draught  a  constitution,  under 


My  Study,  17 

which  substantially  the  American  Education  Society 
has  been  in  operation  seventy  years.  It  has  aided 
in  their  training  for  the  pulpit  more  than  seven 
thousand  men,  most  of  whom  could  not  otherwise 
have  given  to  the  Church  the  service  of  educated 
mind.  INIore  than  one-half  of  the  ordained  mis- 
sionaries of  the  American  Board  have  been  of  their 
number,  as  well  as  many  pastors  of  metropolitan 
churches,  and  many  presidents  and  professors  of 
our  schools  of  learning. 

We  often  laud  and  magnify  the  religious  news- 
papers of  our  land.  They  rival  the  pulpit  in  moral 
power.  The  first  weekly  religious  newspaper  in 
the  world  was  originated  in  the  Andover  conclave. 
The  way  in  which  it  came  about  gives  us  a 
glimpse  of  the  simple  and  natural  processes  by 
which  great  things  were  done  there.  Such  things 
are  not  done  by  such  men  with  blast  of  bugle,  and 
beat  of  drum.  On  one  evening  the  desecration  of 
the  Lord's  Day  comes  up  for  discussion.  A  German 
conclave  on  the  same  topic  would  have  appointed 
a  committee  to  go  home,  and  consider  and  inquire 
and  investigate  and  collate  and  report  on  the  na- 
ture of  the  Christian  sabbath,  and  what  constitutes 
its  desecration.  One  of  the  Andover  brethren, 
with  quick  Saxon  sense,  asks,  "  What  can  be  done 
about  it  ? "  Another  replies,  "  Let  us  prepare 
short,  pithy  articles  on  the  subject,  and  print  them 
in  the  newspapers."  A  third  responds,  "Not  a 
newspaper  in  the  land  would  publish  them."  Then 
comes  the  upshot  of  the  whole  business,  "It  is 


18  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

high  time  that  we  had  a  newspaper  that  will." 
Here  was  "  The  Boston  Kecorder  "  in  embryo  ;  the 
original  of  "  The  Congregationalist,"  and  the  pio- 
neer of  all  kindred  publications  in  the  world. 
Said  Dr.  Morse,  in  writing  to  Mr.  Farrar  soon 
after,  "  We  depend  on  you  at  Andover  to  ripen 
the  plan.  We  are  ready  to  unite  in  carrying  it 
into  execution." 

It  was  the  mission  of  that  group  at  Andover  to 
"ripen  plans"  of  great  things  with  small  begin- 
nings. Theirs  were  inventive  and  constructive 
minds.  They  illustrated  the  fact,  of  wliich  Mr. 
Froude  has  made  emphatic  mention,  that  hard- 
headed  Calvinist  thinkers  are  long-headed,  practi- 
cal workers.  In  their  thinking,  they  exalted  God  : 
in  their  working,  God  honored  them.  They  illus- 
trated also  the  fact,  so  often  observed  in  unwritten 
history,  that  earnest  men,  by  simply  walking  in 
the  way  of  duty,  and  doing  that  which  most 
imperatively  needs  to  be  done,  will  inevitably  do 
great  things.  They  can  not  help  it.  The  plain 
way  of  duty  is  the  highway  of  greatness.  The 
word  "  ought "  is  kindred  to  every  great  thing  in 
the  universe. 

They  have  a  custom,  in  the  villages  on  the 
Rhine,  of  anchoring  a  grist-mill  in  the  middle  of 
the  river,  where  the  current  is  strongest,  and 
making  the  rapids  grind  the  food  of  the  whole 
community.  The  river  is  a  docile  laborer.  "It 
asks  for  no  wages,"  threatens  no  strikes,  and  never 
quits  work  for  a  carouse.     It  puts  into  the  mill  a 


My  Study,  19 

power  independent  of  drawbacks,  and  which  has 
no  caprices.  So  let  any  man  plant  himself  in  the 
midstream  of  God's  plans,  and  take  manful  grip 
at  the  thing  that  first  comes  to  hand,  working 
with  a  will  at  it,  and  the  current  of  eternal  decree 
will  impart  its  own  momentum  to  his  work,  so  that 
it  will  grow  into  grand  achievement.  The  law  of 
spiritual  gravitation  works  in  line  with  such  men. 
Every  such  man  stands  in  the  thick  of  godlike 
opportunity.  So  was  it  with  the  simple-minded 
yet  eager  men  of  the  Andover  brotherhood.  They 
seized  the  thought  which  came  from  God  to  them 
through  the  exigency  of  the  time,  and  did  their 
duty  about  it  like  men ;  and  great  things  came  of  it. 
It  was  not  the  scintillation  of  meteoric  genius :  it 
was  the  gravitation  of  consecrated  common  sense. 
It  was  more  than  the  founding  of  an  empire  to 
pioneer  into  the  world  the  weekly  religious  press. 
In  a  similar  manner  the  American  Home  Mission- 
ary Society  came  to  its  birth  on  this  spot.  The 
need  of  pastors  for  feeble  churches  was  imperative. 
Pioneer  preachers  for  the  founding  of  churches  in 
the  waste  places  of  the  West  were  wanted.  It 
was  the  ambition  of  the  men  at  Andover  to  send 
an  educated  ministry  westward  as  fast  as  emigra- 
tion could  blaze  trees  for  roadways  through  the 
wilderness.  But  how  should  the  churches  in 
regions  where  commerce  was  carried  on  by  barter, 
support  pastors  who  had  nothing  that  was  worth 
barter?  It  was  a  grave  question.  But  to  the 
inventive  enterprise  of  the  Andover  circle,  to  ask 


20  My  Study :  and  Other  Assays. 

it  was  to  aiisAver  it.  It  was  not  their  way  to 
moon  over  difficulties. 

There  had  been  for  a  considerable  time  local 
societies,  scattered  here  and  there,  limited  by  State 
and  county  lines,  for  the  aid  of  feeble  churches. 
In  a  single  evening  the  deliberations  at  Andover 
matured  a  plan  for  making  those  isolated  associa- 
tions auxiliary  to  a  national  institution  which 
should  lift  the  work  up  into  national  importance. 
The  American  Home  Missionary  Society  was  the 
result  of  that  evening's  session.  At  this  date  it 
has  assisted  nearly  five  thousand  churches.  Most 
of  these  have  been  in  localities  which  could  not 
otherwise  have  received  the  ministrations  of  the 
gospel  in  season  to  give  character  to  the  great 
States  of  the  North- West.  Many  of  them  were 
planted  at  strategic  points  at  which  the  dominant 
moral  power  ruled  the  infancy  of  those  States. 
Here,  again,  great  effects  from  little  causes  are 
illustrated  in  the  history  of  that  fragment  of  the 
olden  time  which  we  are  reviewing. 

No  more  magnificent  illustration  of  the  same 
thing  can  be  found  than  that  furnished  by  the  his- 
tory of  the  temperance  reform.  It  is  not  generally 
known  that  all  the  organizations  now  existing 
for  the  promotion  of  abstinence  from  intoxicating 
liquors  OAve  their  origin  ultimately  to  the  Andover 
Conference. 

Things  happened  in  this  wise  ;  in- 1814  Dr.  Ed- 
wards formed  in  his  congregation  a  society  called 
"The    Andover  South   Parish  Society  for  doing 


My  Study,  21 

good."  The  homeliness  of  its  title  suggests  the 
simplicity  of  its  aim.  One  object  named  in  its 
constitution  was  "to  promote  temperance."  His 
afterthought  was,  that  that  method  of  "  doing 
good  "  was  capable  of  expansion.  He  brought  it 
to  the  notice  of  his  colleagues  in  Dr.  Porter's 
study.  The  result  was  the  formation  of  a  society 
entitled  "  An  Association  of  Heads  of  Families  for 
the  Promotion  of  Temperance."  The  first  seven 
names  signed  to  its  pledge  of  total  abstinence 
were  those  of  members  of  the  little  fraternity 
whose  life's  work  is  here  recorded.  TJiat  ivas  the 
first  organized  movement  in  the  ivo7'ld  founded  on  the 
pledge  of  entire  abstinence  from  intoxicating  drinks. 
The  same  consultations  led  circuitously  to  the 
founding  of  the  American  Temperance  Society. 
For  several  years  the  Andover  brotherhood  num- 
bered among  its  members  Rev.  Dr.  Hewitt,  whose 
career  as  the  "  apostle  of  temperance "  has  been 
equaled  by  no  one  but  that  of  John  B.  Gough. 
His  eloquence  is  remembered  to  this  day,  by  those 
who  heard  it,  as  something  wonderful  in  the  his- 
tory of  public  debate. 

Few  things  illustrate  so  signally  the  progressive 
ideas  of  those  far-seeing  men  as  these  pioneer 
efforts  for  a  revolution  in  the  drinking-customs 
of  the  world.  The  earlier  associations  for  the  pur- 
pose, besides  being  limited  in  locality,  all  touched 
only  the  surface  of  the  evil  which  they  attempted 
to  remove.  They  were  all  founded  on  the  princi- 
ple of  temperance^  not  only  as  distinct  from,  but 


22  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

as  opposed  to,  abstinence.  The  moderate  use  of 
intoxicants  they  encouraged.  This  was  universal 
in  the  drinking-usages  of  society.  Its  effect  had 
become  alarming  in  its  prognostications  of  the 
future.  An  aged  clergyman,  who  had  been  in 
his  prime  at  that  period,  once  remarked  in  my 
hearing,  "  It  was  a  wonder  that  we  did  not  become 
a  generation  of  drunkards."  Intoxication  among 
gentlemen  of  culture  and  refinement  was  too  fre- 
quent to  excite  surprise,  or  to  provoke  censure. 
Everybody  was  expected  to  make  the  slip  some- 
times. Lawyers  came  to  the  bar,  and  judges  to  the 
bench,  and  ministers  to  the  pulpit,  occasionally  in 
a  state  of  inebriation.  Young  preachers  at  their 
ordination  were  sometimes  charged  not  to  allow 
themselves  to  be  intoxicated  by  the  hospitality  of 
their  parishioners. 

The  late  Rev.  Dr.  Hill  of  Virginia  once  related 
his  experience  in  his  first  pastorate  substantially 
as  follows ;  viz.,  he  rode  in  the  saddle  through 
the  outlying  districts  of  his  parish,  to  make  his 
first  acquaintance  with  his  people.  At  every 
farmhouse  the  decanter  and  the  wineglass  were 
forthcoming.  The  good  people  knew  no  better 
way  of  entertaining  their  pastor  than  to  make  him 
drunk.  He  perceived  as  the  afternoon  wore  on, 
that  he  found  it  difficult  to  mount  his  horse.  He 
saw  both  sides  of  him  at  once.  He  at  length  said 
to  himself,  "  John  "  (if  I  have  his  baptismal  name 
correctly),  "  this  will  never  do:  you'll  be  a  drunk- 
ard before  you  know  it."     That  advance  into  an 


Mij  Study.  23 

inebriate  ministry  was  cut  short,  and  a  good  man 
saved. 

Such  was  the  peril  everywhere  attendant  on  a 
young  preacher's  career.  The  popular  theory  was, 
that  to  abstain  wholly  from  spirituous  liquors  was 
cowardice ;  to  remove  the  decanters  from  the  side- 
board was  parsimony ;  and  to  pledge  one's  self  or 
others  to  total  abstinence  was  a  sin  against  the 
example  of  our  Lord. 

Even  so  late  as  1844  the  clerp^v  of  Scotland 
were  not  emancipated  from  the  old  regime^  if  in- 
deed they  are  now.  When  the  reverend  deputa- 
tion from  the  ''  Free  Church  "  came  to  this  country 
to  solicit  aid,  their  countrymen  in  Boston  regaled 
them  with  the  national  punch-bowl.  Rev.  Dr. 
Cunningham,  in  rehearsing  afterwards  his  impres- 
sions of  New  England,  said  in  substance,  "Your 
free  churches  are  a  surprise  to  me,  your  frame- 
houses  are  a  novelty,  and  your  ivliishy  is  execrable.'''' 

Nobod}^  thought  of  disturbing  the  time-honored 
custom  of  moderate  drinking,  associated  as  it  was 
with  the  marriages  and  funerals  and  public  festivi- 
ties and  private  rejoicings  of  many  generations, 
till  that  little  company  of  "  fanatics  "  appeared  at 
Andover.  The  pledge  of  one  clerical  association 
in  Massachusetts  whose  members  w^ere  frightened 
at  the  increase  of  drunkenness  among  themselves, 
ran  thus :  "  We  solemnly  pledge  ourselves  not  to 
use  more  of  intoxicating  beverages  than  we  con- 
scientiously believe  to  be  good  for  us ! "  Could 
the  "  National  Association  of  Brewers,"  in  their 


24  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

late  crusade  against  prohibitoiy  legislation,  ask  for 
a  more  satisfactory  pledge  than  that  ?  Look  into 
the  pamphlets  and  magazines  and  sermons  of  those 
days,  and  you  will  find  that  the  Lord's  Supper  and 
the  marriage  at  Cana  were  used  as  an  absolute 
embargo  on  all  efforts  to  discourage  the  moderate 
use  of  rum.  It  is  more  than  a  twice-told  tale,  that 
New-England  rum  and  New-England  missionaries 
went  abroad  in  the  same  brig,  and  nobody  saw  the 
farce  of  it. 

The  temperance  societies  at  Andover,  and  after 
them  the  national  society  at  New  York,  were 
formed  upon  the  idea  of  keeping  temperate  people 
temperate  by  entire  abstinence.  Of  this  idea  a 
European  writer,  quoted  by  the  late  Rev.  Dr. 
Jackson  of  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Educa- 
tion, —  to  whose  researches  I  am  indebted  for 
many  of  tlie  facts  here  narrated,  —  writes,  "  On 
whose  mind  this  great  truth  first  rose  is  not 
known.  Whoever  he  was,  peace  to  his  memory ! 
He  has  done  more  for  the  world  than  he  who  en- 
riched it  by  the  discovery  of  a  new  continent." 

The  fact  undoubtedly  is,  that  that  radical  re- 
formatory idea  was  originated  by  some  one  of  the 
pioneer  reformers  at  Andover.  Certain  it  is,  that 
they  first  gave  to  it  a  practical  development  in  a 
great  organization  of  world-wide  influence. 

As  a  whole,  those  septemviri  were  a  rare  group 
of  men,  fitted  into  a  rare  juncture  of  opportuni- 
ties in  the  history  of  the  times.  Most  of  them 
were  not  extraordinary  men,  except  as  the  crisis 


My  Study.  25 

they  were  called  to  meet,  and  the  duties  they  set 
their  hands  to,  made  them  such.  They  belonged 
to  that  class  of  men  whose  fidelity  to  duty  in 
emergencies  lifts  them  above  the  level  of  their 
own  ambitions,  and  surprises  the  world  by  their 
unlooked-for  achievement.  The  very  magnitude 
of  the  ideas  which  the  work  of  the  hour  pressed 
upon  them  weighted  them  with  such  a  sense  of 
responsibility,  that  they  could  not  help  living  in- 
tensely, and  working  out  grand  results.  They  had 
inherited  the  old  notion  of  the  Pilgrims,  of  living 
and  working  for  the  whole  world,  and  for  all 
coming  timcvS.  They  lived  in  sight  of  all  future 
generations.  The  glory  of  a  "  latter  day  "  gilded 
their  horizon. 

Such  is  the  early  history  of  my  study.  Such 
are  the  inspirations  which  float  in  the  atmosphere 
around  me.  In  a  certain  corner  near  my  table, 
to  which  my  eye  turns  with  reverent  sympathy, 
Dr.  Porter,  just  as  he  was  giving  a  farewell  kiss 
to  his  adopted  son,  breathed  his  last.  His  associ- 
ates in  those  hallowed  gatherings  have  since  then 
all  gone  to  their  rest.  Their  works  do  follow 
them.  A  great  cloud  of  witnesses  come  in  at  my 
windows  to  tell  me  what  Andover  icas  in  the  olden 
time.  I  am  reminded  of.  what  Wordsworth  says 
of  som.e  of  England's  historic  names,  of  men  "  who 
called  Milton  friend  :  "  — 

"  Great  men  have  been  among  us  ;  hands  that  penned, 
And  tongues  that  uttered  va^doaij  betttr  uoud." 


26  My  Study  :  and  Other  Essays. 

Another  generation  and  still  another  have  taken 
their  places,  to  testify  what  Anclover  is.  The  re- 
sults of  the  comparison  can  be  known  only  in  that 
day  when  the  "fire  shall  try  every  man's  work, 
of  what  sort  it  is." 


in. 

MY  STUDY. 
PART  ni. 

Since  the  foregoing  narratives  were  published 
in  "  The  Congregationalist,"  the  accuracy  of  their 
statements  has  been  questioned  in  two  particulars. 
One  is  that  of  the  origin  of  the  first  religious  news- 
paper. I  find,  on  investigation  of  all  the  facts  at 
my  command,  that  the  question  is  more  com- 
plicated than  I  supposed.  Three  or  four  ''  Rich- 
monds  are  in  the  field."  The  decision  turns  on 
three  inquiries ;  viz.,  What  is  a  religious  netvs- 
paper,  properly  so  called?  when  was  the  first 
weeMy  religious  newspaper  founded?  and  when 
did  the  first  weekly  religious  newspaper  begin, 
which  lived.,  and  has  made  for  itself  a  history  ? 

Now,  it  is  true  that  the  art  of  printing  existed 
before  the  Andover  conclave  ;  it  is  true  that  a  reli- 
gious periodical,  founded  partially  for  the  purposes 
of  our  present  religious  newspapers,  and  issued 
fortnightly,  preceded  "  The  Boston  Recorder ;  " 
and  it  is  true  that  another  attempt  to  create  such 
a  paper  preceded  the  Andover  movement,  and  its 
result  was  short-lived.     But  I  am  satisfied,  after 

37 


28  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

reading,  as  I  believe,  all  that  can  be  said  on  the 
three  or  four  sides  of  the  question,  that  the  Ando- 
ver  men  believed  that  their  movement  was  entirely 
original.  They  did  not  consciously  follow  in  the 
track  of  any  predecessor.  It  is  nearly,  if  not  quite, 
as  certain  that,  understanding  by  the  term  "  news- 
paper "  the  thoroughly  equipped  and  broadly  aimed 
organ  which  we  now  mean  by  it,  "  The  Boston 
Recorder "  was  the  first  weekly  periodical  of  the 
kind  which  lived  to  create  for  itself  a  history.  It 
was  the  first,  not  only  in  this  country,  but,  so  far 
as  I  know,  in  the  world.  Thus  stands  the  matter 
at  present.  The  details  of  the  evidence  would 
hardly  interest  the  public. 

The  other  particular  is  the  origin  of  the  idea  of 
making  abstinence,  and  not  temperate  drinking,  the 
i3asis  of  organized  effort  for  the  promotion  of  tem- 
j^erance.  Here,  again,  I  find  ample  evidence  that 
the  Andover  men  believed  themselves  to  be  the  ori- 
ginal pioneers  in  that  direction.  They  were  con- 
scious of  no  indebtedness  to  anybody  for  the  idea. 
Yet  to  us  at  this  day  the  idea  is  so  patent  and  so 
necessary  that  we  can  readily  believe  that  it  may 
have  occurred  to  scores  of  other  minds,  and  may 
have  been  given  to  the  public  in  speeches  and  ser- 
mons on  the  alarming  increase  of  intemperance. 
Our  wonder  is,  that  any  other  idea  should  have 
been  dominant  among  tlie  friends  of  temperance. 
But  I  can  find  no  evidence  whatever  that  any 
organization  founded  on  the  pledge  of  total  absti- 
nence preceded  the  two  mentioned  in  my  narrative, 


My  Study.  29 

as  created  at  Andover.  The  probability  is,  that 
the  idea  was  original  with  Dr.  Edwards,  and  that 
his  associates  co-operated  with  him  in  forming  the 
local  societies  referred  to.  It  is  certain,  also,  that 
the  consultations  here  led  to  consultations  else- 
where, out  of  which  all  the  efficient  tem-perance 
societies  in  the  land  grew. 

All  such  questions  of  priority,  in  originating 
great  movements  for  the  growth  of  civilization, 
involve  the  same  principles  which  are  involved  in 
the  claim  of  Columbus  to  the  discovery  of  Amer- 
ica. Probably  more  than  one  sophomore  in  college 
has  believed  that  he  has  made  a  great  discovery  in 
the  fact  that  Columbus  did  not  discover  the  New 
World,  and  that  the  Northmen  did.  But  history 
has  again  and  again  pricked  such  bubbles  by  rec- 
ognizing two  things.  One  is,  that  a  great  idea 
usually  is  original  to  more  than  one  discoverer. 
Great  ideas  come  when  the  world  needs  them. 
They  surround  the  world's  ignorance,  and  press 
for  admission.  They  succeed  in  making  an  aper- 
ture for  themselves  through  many  minds  to  which 
they  are  original,  perhaps  as  much  so  to  one  as  to 
another.  It  has  become  a  truism,  therefore,  that 
great  discoveries  must  be  contested  as  to  priority 
in  time. 

The  other  principle  is,  that  the  honor  of  the  dis- 
covery is  due  to  him  who  first  puts  the  novel  idea 
for  which  the  world  is  waiting  into  such  worldng- 
form  as  to  make  it  practically  valuable  to  man- 
kind.    The  inventions  of   the  mariner's  compass 


so  My  Study  :  and  Other  Essays. 

and  of  movable  types  are  not  properly  credited  to 
the  Chinese  inventors  who  first  gave  them  being, 
and  then  dropped  them  into  the  conservative 
abyss.  They  are  to  be  credited  to  the  European 
minds  which  first  made  them  factors  in  the  world's 
civilization.  So  the  discovery  of  America  is  not 
due  to  the  Northmen  who  first  made  it,  but  did 
nothing  with  it  but  to  gape  at  it.  It  is  due  to 
Columbus,  who  first  used  it  to  bring  the  old  and 
new  worlds  together,  and  to  open  savage  wilds  to 
the  crowded  populations  of  other  continents. 

On  the  same  principles,  and  by  the  same  tests, 
the  men  of  the  Andover  Conference  are  entitled 
justly  to  all  that  has  been  claimed  for  them.  The 
vital  points  in  the  claim  are  two :  first,  that  they 
were  consciously  original  in  the  great  ideas  which 
they  conceived  ;  secondly,  that  they  were  the  prac- 
tical pioneers  who  first  put  those  ideas  to  use  in 
institutions  which  have  lived  to  create  a  history. 


rv. 

VIBRATORY   PROGRESS   IN   RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS. 

The  world's  advances  in  great  ideas  commonly 
imitate  the  movement  of  a  pendulum.  Conquest 
of  a  great  principle  is  rarely  made  and  held  fast 
in  its  healthy  and  balanced  mean  till  the  human 
mind  has  swung  forth  and  back  between  its  cor- 
relative extremes.  Often  successive  vibrations 
occur  before  the  popular  faith  gravitates  to  the 
exact  truth  and  rests  there.  Indeed,  exact  truth, 
rounded  with  astronomical  precision,  without  an 
excrescence  or  a  bulge  anywhere,  is  never  realized 
in  popular  thought  on  a  subject  vital  to  the  world's 
progress.  Approximations  to  the  perfect  crystal 
globe  are  all  that  our  mental  laboratory  achieves. 

This  vibratory  phenomenon  has  been  amply 
illustrated  in  the  history  of  religious  beliefs.  For 
instance,  to  our  logic,  the  unity  of  God  seems 
inevitable.  But  the  world  did  not  make  assured 
conquest  of  it  till  after  the  popular  reason  had 
swung  loose  and  often  between  faith  in  gods  innu- 
merable, and  faith  in  no  God  at  all.  Hebrew  faith, 
even  with  the  aid  of  divine  illumination  and  an- 
gelic auxiliaries  and  miraculous  theophanies,  did 
not  rest  in  monotheism,  till,  after  many  oscilla- 

31 


32  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

tions,  it  had  been  forced  back  from  the  ethnic 
mythologies  by  servitude  under  pagan  despotism. 
Till  then,  its  history  is  a  succession  of  lapses  and 
reforms  and  relapses  and  recoveries.  It  covers 
centuries  with  wrecks  of  faith  and  retributive 
catastrophes. 

The  spiritual  idea  of  Christ  came  to  its  maturity 
in  a  similar  way.  It  did  not  get  possession,  even 
of  the  chosen  twelve,  until  the  crucifixion  before 
their  very  eyes  wrenched  out  of  them  the  notion 
of  an  Oriental  monarchy  and  a  golden  age.  Mas- 
ters in  Israel  were  ignorant  of  the  first  principles 
of  a  spiritual  kingdom.  They  sought  in  the 
tAvilight  to  solve  the  doubts  in  which  their  minds 
swung  back  and  forth,  between  the  letter  and  the 
spirit  of  prophecy.  It  should  seem  that  men  are 
not  competent  to  become  the  pioneers  of  a  great 
spiritual  idea,  till  they  have  themselves  in  some 
sort  lived  through  the  opposite  error.  We  know 
nothing  but  our  experience. 

Turning  to  the  practical  working  of  Christi- 
anity, we  observe  there  the  same  phenomenon  of 
oscillatory  progress.  Is  salvation  by  the  heart's 
faith,  or  by  the  vigil  and  the  scourge  ?  The  way 
to  heaven  hung  suspended  for  ages,  like  Mahom- 
et's bridge  in  mid-air,  between  the  antipodes  of 
faith  and  works.  The  history  of  those  centuries 
of  twilight  discloses  a  surging  sea  of  mingled 
doubt  and  superstition,  on  which  honest  inquiry 
was  "  driven  by  the  winds  and  tossed."  Compara- 
tively fevv^  found  anchorage  in  the  truth.     They 


Vibratory  Progress  in  Religious  Beliefs.      83 

were  driven  to  its  discovery  by  the  monstrosities 
which  burrowed  in  the  monasteries  of  Europe,  and 
flaunted  their  vileness  in  open  day  at  Rome.  John 
of  Goch,  John  of  Wesel,  John  Wessel,  John  Huss, 
John  Wickliife,  —  five  of  the  saintly  name,  —  rep- 
resent a  goodly  succession  of  men,  who,  together 
with  fraternities  of  believers  like  "  The  Brethren 
of  the  Common  Lot,"  were  impelled  into  a  truer 
faith  and  a  purer  life  by  the  putrescence  of  false 
and  unclean  things  around  them.  But  half  a  cen- 
tury must  elapse  after  the  latest  of  the  five  before 
Luther  could  command  the  world's  hearing. 

Suppose  that  the  demoralization  of  the  age  had 
been  but  half  so  stupendous  as  it  was.  What 
would  have  been  the  sequel  ?  No  Luther  and  no 
reform.  Half-grown  evils  do  not  compel  revolu- 
tions. They  create,  not  Luthers,  but  such  men  as 
Erasmus.  His  principle  respecting  the  degeneracy 
of  the  times  was,  "  Evils  which  men  can  not  remedy 
they  must  look  at  through  their  fingers." 

^To  compel  the  growth  of  thoroughbred  reform- 
ers, error  must  have  time  to  come  to  a  head.  It 
must  ulcerate.  In  the  divine  economy,  the  detec- 
tive feature  is  never  suspended.  Evil  must  declare 
itself  by  acting  out  its  character  to  the  full  before 
it  dies.  Hence  came  the  revolting  extreme  of 
Tetzel's  mission  to  Germany,  so  insolent  to  the 
common  sense,  and  so  offensive  to  the  indignant 
conscience  of  men.  A  Christian  missionary  must 
become  a  "spiritual  hawker,"  as  Froude  calls  him, 
whose  business  was  to  sell  '^  passports  to  the  east- 


84  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

est  places  in  purgatory."  That  created  the  new 
faith  by  enforced  re-action.  Without  such  detec- 
tion of  wrong  at  its  worst,  Luther  would  not  have 
risen  to  his  full  stature,  and  stood  erect,  a  free 
man,  when  half-way  down  the  steps  of  Pilate's 
staircase.  He  would  have  toiled  on  cringing 
knees  to  the  bottom.  He  would  have  earned  his 
thousand  j^ears  of  release  from  purgatory,  and 
gone  back  to  his  cell  at  Erfurt,  a  shaven  monk,  to 
tell  his  beads,  and  patter  Latin  prayers  to  the  end 
of  his  days. 

In  some  things  the  extreme  begat  an  extreme. 
Luther  and  his  compeers  swung  loose  from  some 
truths.  An  iconoclastic  faith  is  rarely  an  eclectic 
and  well-balanced  faith.  The  destructive  force  is 
not  commonly  the  rebuilding  force.  In  the  vision 
of  St.  John,  the  angels  who  were  commissioned 
to  devastate  sea  and  land  did  that  and  nothing 
else.  They  bore  in  their  hands  nothing  but  the 
golden  vials  of  the  wrath  of  God.  Moral  revolu- 
tions tend  to  the  same  insulation  of  service.  The 
men  who  pull  down  are  not  the  men  who  build 
up,  and  with  the  evil  some  good  is  left  in  ruins. 
So  it  was  with  the  work  of  the  reformers:  the 
destructive  force  was  in  the  ascendant. 

Perhaps  the  most  splendid  illustration  of  the 
vibratory  principle  in  modern  Christian  history  is 
the  recoil  from  monastic  seclusion  to  the  daring 
activity  of  Christian  missions.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  this  self-diffusive  type  of  Christianity 
could  have  come  into  being  when  it  did,  but  for 


Vihrato7y  Progress  in  Religious  Beliefs.      85 

the  self-centered  type  which  preceded  it.  The 
theory  of  the  world's  conversion  is  intrinsically  one 
of  the  most  startling  of  historic  ideas.  It  is  no 
wonder,  that  when  Alexander  Duff  first  broached 
the  project  of  missions  to  India,  before  the  rever- 
end Assembly  of  the  Kirk  of  Scotland,  he  was  re- 
ceived by  good  and  able  men,  even  men  of  large 
foreseeing  vision,  with  a  pause  of  incredulous 
silence.  It  is  no  wonder,  that,  when  a  few  humble 
students  of  theology  from  the  hills  of  Berkshire 
begged  of  the  General  Association  of  Massachu- 
setts to  send  them  on  a  mission  somewhere  to  the 
heathen,  the  wisest  men  present  shook  their  heads 
in  doubt  whether  the  public  sentiment  of  the 
churches  would  bear  so  novel  and  hopeless  an  ad- 
venture. No  wonder  is  it,  that  the  classic  mind 
of  Edward  Everett  derided  the  enterprise  in 
strains  of  silver  eloquence. 

It  ivas  a  wild  idea.  Is  it  not  to  this  day  the 
most  original  idea  in  history  ?  Some  secret  power 
must  have  projected  it  into  human  thought.  What 
was  that  power  ?  It  was  the  Spirit  of  God,  using 
to  his  own  purposes  the  inevitable  recoil  of  regen- 
erate mind  from  the  extreme  of  monastic  individu- 
alism. The  nature  of  things  forbade  that  immense 
bodies  of  men,  inspired  by  the  power  of  an  end- 
less life,  should  either  stagnate  or  ferment  in  the 
faith  of  the  cloister  for  ever. 

Relics  of  that  faith  filled  Protestant  Christendom 
in  the  form  of  an  intense  selfhood  in  religious  life. 
The  theory  of  salvation  appeared  to  be,  ^'Everv 


36  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

man  for  himself."  The  electric  elements  of  Chris- 
tian theology  had  no  outlet  in  any  large-hearted, 
Christ-like  action  proportioned  to  their  expansive 
power.  They  were  pent  np  in  the  cells  of  indi- 
vidual being.  They  were  like  a  spiral  spring 
coiled  up  and  riveted.  Believers  were  still  breath- 
ing a  cloistral  atmosphere.  They  were  hermits  in 
their  religious  tastes.  The  chief  business  of  their 
religion  was  self-examination.  That  duty  was 
more  frequently  than  any  other  one  inculcated  by 
the  pulpit.  Christians  lived  with  finger  ever  on 
the  spiritual  pulse.  Men  and  women  of  unusual 
devoutness,  who  now  would  be  district  mission- 
aries, then  wrote  diaries  of  their  fluctuating 
moods.  They  wrote  marvelous  stories  of  their 
conflicts  with  the  Devil.  Meetings  for  religious 
conference  were  largely  given  to  narratives  of 
their  "  experience." 

It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  things  that  that  style 
of  Christian  living  should  be  prolonged  without 
variation  beyond  the  time  wlien  the  Christian  mind 
found  it  out.  jMen  must  find  out  both  the  good 
and  the  evil  of  it.  Good  men  must  live  it  through 
till  they  learned  it  by  heart.  Then  the  re-action 
to  something  more  self-forgetful  and  adventurous 
was  inevitable.  What  form  could  that  re-action 
take  more  natural  than  the  magnificent  develop- 
ment of  Christian  missions?  A  missionary  map 
of  the  world  was  the  new  symbol  of  Christianity 
which  was  sure  to  come.  The  swing  of  the  pen- 
dulum was  to  be  reversed. 


Vibratory  Progress  in  Religious  Beliefs.      37 

It  has  become  a  commonplace,  now,  that  ours 
is  the  age  of  missions.  Philanthropic  activity  has 
reached  a  commanding  altitude  of  success.  The 
world  no  longer  laughs  at  it.  Silvern  orators  no 
longer  entertain  gentle  and  perfumed  hearers  with 
predictions  of  its  failure.  It  has  no  occasion  now 
to  ask  for  the  world's  respect :  it  commands  the 
world's  admiration.     But  what  is  the  sequence  ? 

Is  it  not  that  signs  are  beginning  to  appear  that 
this,  too,  must  undergo  revision  ?  Perils  are  loom- 
ing up  on  the  not  distant  horizon,  which  are  the 
natural  product  of  an  age  of  vigilant  and  inventive 
expansion.  We  are  lapsing  into  an  unthoughtful 
style  of  religious  life.  The  meditative  graces  seem 
to  be  waning.  Christian  work  takes  precedence 
of  Christian  reflection.  A  man  is  estimated  by 
what  he  gives  rather  than  by  wdiat  he  is.  Wealth 
is  assuming  an  undue  importance  in  the  worth  of 
individuals  and  of  churches.  Gold  is  morally,  as 
well  as  by  troy  weight,  a  heavy  metal.  The  out- 
look is  ominous,  when,  in  any  large  fraternity  of 
believers,  the  leaders  take  their  leadership  by  right 
of  property  rather  than  b}^  right  of  mind.  It  is 
never  so  in  heroic  ages.  Then  the  right  to  lead 
depends  on  the  force  of  character,  which  creates 
the  power  to  lead.  We  need  to  learn  by  heart  Sir 
William  Hamilton's  aphorism,  "  There  is  nothing 
great  in  this  world  but  man,  and  nothing  great  in 
man  but  mind." 

From  such  a  condition  of  things,  one  peril  often 
comes  without  premonition.     It  is  a  break,  one  or 


38  My  Study :  and  Other  JSssays. 

many,  in  the  solidity  of  that  groundwork  of  belief 
which  must  always  underlie  permanent  growth. 
Great  action  must  be  built  on  great  thought. 
Breadth  of  expansion  must  be  grounded  in  pro- 
found beliefs.  Diffusive  force  must  spring  from 
concentrated  character.  A  man  can  do  only  to 
the  limit  of  what  he  is.  Be3^ond  that,  all  is  make- 
shift. Are  not  these  underground  foundations 
loosening  ? 

In  other  words,  do  not  the  signs  of  our  times 
indicate  that  this  busy,  mercurial  style  of  Christian 
activity  needs  to  be  iveighted  with  more  consoli- 
dated thinking?  Central  doctrines  of  our  faith 
seem  to  be  jostled  out  of  place  underneath. 
Though  not  sunk  out  of  sight,  they  lie  loose 
and  inert.  They  can  support  none  but  a  rickety 
superstructure.  The  structure  we  are  building 
leans  out  of  plumb,  like  the  Tow^r  of  Pisa.  It  is 
not  their  fault,  but  their  misfortune  rather,  that 
our  laity,  on  whom  we  rely  for  leadership  in  Chris- 
tian enterprise,  no  longer  hold  the  independent 
convictions  which  their  fathers  had,  the  fruit  of 
their  own  theological  reading  and  reflections. 
Said  one  of  them  at  a  juncture  of  affairs  at  which 
his  official  position  called  for  an  opinion  of  a  doc- 
trine in  theology,  "  The  clergy  must  take  care  of 
that :  T  go  Avith  the  majority."  Did  he  not  repre- 
sent the  attitude  of  multitudes  of  intelligent  and 
earnest  laymen  ?  Yet,  in  the  present  drift  of  the 
age,  what  other  attitude  can  they  hold  ? 

The  problem  ia  not  of  easy  solution.     Yet  tluik 


Vibratory  Progress  in  Religious  Beliefs.      39 

attitude  of  dependent  faith,  in  which  a  man  stands 
erect  only  wlien  wedged  in  a  crowd,  is  fraught 
with  immense  peril.  An  inherited  belief,  flanked 
on  all  sides  by  the  forces  of  stimulant  and  daring 
inquiry,  iyivites  doubt.  The  doctrinal  beliefs  of 
clergymen  are  always  open  to  the  suspicion  of 
professional  narrowness.  Under  such  conditions 
the  ancestral  faith  of  laymen  seems  made  for  skep- 
ticism to  sport  with.  Many  minds  thus  situated 
are  preparing,  when  temptation  crowds  hard,  to 
doubt  every  thing  but  the  theorems  of  Euclid. 
Errors  floating  in  the  atmosphere  may  captivate 
the  most  enterprising  minds,  and  drift  them  no- 
body knows  where,  unless  a  more  thoughtful  piety 
is  superadded  to  that  of  this  philanthropic  and 
grand,  but  hurried  and  distracting,  missionary 
business. 

We  all  need  the  constructive  and  tonic  influ- 
ences of  solitude.  So  much  solitude,  so  much 
character.  We  specially  need  a  new  infusion  of 
theological  thinking  among  the  leaders  of  our  laity. 
We  need  a  class  of  laymen  who  will  take  time  to 
think  out  for  themselves  the  fundamentals  of  the 
faith  they  profess.  Few  they  might  be  in  num- 
bers, but  an  unconscious  aristocracy  in  power  over 
popular  thought.  Vv'ithout  some  such  auxiliaries 
to  the  clergy  to  steady  the  popular  faith,  and  to 
act  as  conductors  of  electric  thinking  from  the 
pulpit  to  the  pew,  we  may  by  and  by  find  our 
churches  quaking  in  secret  at  phantoms  of  doubt, 
which  they  dare  not  speak  of,  and  yet  can  not  get 


40  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

rid  of.  This  is  the  peril  of  a  "  missionary  age  " 
which  is  that  and  nothing  more.  Worst  relapses 
follow  most  splendid  advances.  Best  things  are 
susceptible  of  most  fatal  perversions.  Does  not 
the  pendulum  now  need  the  touch  of  an  unseen 
hand  ? 

But  we  need  not  quake  nor  croak  Avith  pessim- 
istic fears.  The  Tower  of  Pisa  leans  a  long  while 
without  toppling  over.  While  the  Church  remains 
in  her  formative  age,  the  look  of  her  condition  will 
be  that  of  transitionary  movement.  Much  of  her 
vitality  will  go  to  rectifying  abuses,  repressing 
inordinate  tastes,  and  re-adjusting  mistaken  or 
exaggerated  beliefs.  Opirjion  will  traverse  wide 
spaces  from  extreme  to  extreme.  The  movement 
will  often  resemble  the  ponderous  swing  of  the 
pendulum  of  an  astronomical  clock  of  huge  dimen- 
sions. Her  character  vdll  seem  to  consist  of  ten- 
dencies rather  than  of  fixed  qualities  and  consoli- 
dated principles.  These  tendencies  will  be  variable, 
now  to  one  extreme,  then  to  its  antipodes.  The 
popular  faith  may  never  appear  to  repose  securely 
at  the  one  spot  at  which  lies  the  exact  and  bal- 
anced truth. 

Yet,  such  a  look  of  things  should  quicken  the 
courage  of  thinking  men.  It  is  cheering  to  know 
that  no  extreme  has  the  inheritance  of  longevity. 
Error  does  not  belong  to  a  long-lived  species.  It 
carries  in  its  bosom  a  momentum  towards  decay. 
Its  doom  is  to  die  in  the  process  of  the  popular 
recoil  to  its  opposite.     Every  transition  from  end 


Vibratory  Py-ogress  in  Religious  Beliefs,      41 

to  end  may  bring  popular  thought  under  a  more 
potent  magnetism  from  absolute  truth.  Truth, 
pure  and  simple,  is  the  resultant  of  intemperate 
advances  and  indignant  rebounds.  Only  by  such 
oscillatory  progress  does  the  popular  mind  seem 
able  to  achieve  final  and  complete  mastery  of  great 
ideas.  But,  so  sure  as  the  pendulum  is  to  find  its 
point  of  rest,  as  sure  is  the  collective  belief  in 
matters  of  great  moment  for  ever  to  approximate 
the  point  of  pure  truth,  without  excess  and  with- 
out deficit.  Grand  advances  towards  this  may  be 
achieved  by  one  generation.  It  needs  only  the 
leadership  of  devout  thinkers,  inspired  of  God,  to 
be  its  pioneers. 


Y. 

OSCILLATIONS  OF   FAITH   IN   FUTURE 
RETRIBUTION. 

The  dynamic  principle  of  the  pendulum  was 
applied  in  a  former  essay  to  illustrate  certain 
phenomena  in  Christian  history.  It  has  a  hopeful 
bearing  upon  the  present  drift  of  opinion  respect- 
ing endless  punishment. 

Candid  believers  will  concede  that  the  time  has 
been  when  this  doctrine  was  held  in  harsh  and 
repellent  outlines.  It  has  put  on  the  look  of 
hideous  malformations  in  nature.  Its  contorted 
features  have  sometimes  alternated  between  the 
horrible  and  the  grotesque.  Biblical  emblems  of 
perdition  have  been  interpreted  to  the  letter.  The 
fire,  the  lake,  the  brimstone,  the  worm,  the  smoke 
of  torment,  the  physiological  signs  of  speechless 
anguish,  have  been  made  to  appear,  not  only  as 
realities,  but  as  visible  and  tangible  realities.  The 
doomed  have  been  pictured  in  the  full  panoply  of 
flesh  and  blood,  "with  the  nerve-centers  alive  to 
agony,  plunged  beneath  Avaves  of  lambent  flame. 
Dante  paints  one  of  the  circles  of  the  ''  Inferno  " 
as  the  abode  of  men  who  are  so  inclosed  in  glow- 
ing fires,  that,  when  they  speak,  it  appears  as  if 

42 


Oscillations  of  Faith  in  Future  Retribution.     43 

the  very  flames  were  human  tongues  endowed 
with  human  voices.  Our  own  Spenser  represents 
Pilate  submerged  in  the  sea  of  fire,  and  lifting 
his  wringing  hands  above  the  surface.  The  lit- 
eratures of  many  languages  and  centuries  have 
thus  treated  the  retributive  symbols  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. 

Our  tastes  do  not  refuse  tJiis  license  to  poets, 
but  when  preachers  indulge  in  the  same  dramatic 
liberty  we  rebel.  Yet  the  literature  of  the  re- 
tributive sentiment,  aside  from  that  of  the  pulpit, 
offers  to  the  pulpit  almost  no  other  model  than 
this  of  grossly  materialized  conceptions.  It  is  not 
strange,  therefore,  that  such  discourse  lives  in  the 
pulpit  of  our  own  day.  Some  passages  in  "Spur- 
geon's  Sermons"  contain  this  shocking  and  dis- 
gusting literalism. 

Practiced  preachers  well  know  that  it  is  less 
difficult  to  preach  severely  after  a  fashion  than  to 
preach  tenderly  in  a  manly  fashion.  Painful  im- 
pressions of  any  kind  are  a  more  facile  theme  for 
discourse  than  the  winning  and  the  graceful.  The 
bees  that  dropped  honey  on  the  lips  of  Plato  have 
not  swarmed  on  the  homesteads  of  many  of  us. 
Nor  is  the  distinction  limited  to  facility  in  speech : 
it  appears  in  other  arts  as  well.  Why  is  it  that 
of  the  visitors  to  the  galleries  of  Italy,  nine  out  of 
ten  Avill  pause  longer  before  the  "  Dying  Gladia- 
tor "  than  before  the  matchless  Apollo  ?  Why  do 
they  remember  longer  the  statue  of  "■  Laocoon " 
than  that  of  the  "  Venus  de  Medici "  ?     Even  the 


44  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

dog  Cerberus  is  recalled  in  after-years  more  vividly 
than  the  bust  of  Julius  Csesar. 

Quite  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  therefore, 
preachers  have  dwelt  upon  retributive  truth  dis- 
proportionately, as  well  as  intemperately.  Unedu- 
cated preachers  have  discoursed  upon  it  savagely. 
Field-preachers  have  vociferated  it  with  an  im- 
passioned intensity,  and  with  grotesque  accompani- 
ments of  style  and  elocution.  The  tempestuous 
successes  of  one  season  of  evangelistic  labor  have 
sometimes  required  years  of  pastoral  toil  to  undo 
them.  He  is  a  great  man  who  can  preach  well  on 
any  thing,  but  of  great  preachers  he  is  the  great- 
est who  can  preach  well  on  "the  wrath  of  the 
Lamb." 

The  fact  deserves  mention  also,  that  Christian 
art  has  had  a  subtle  but  potent  influence  in  infus- 
ing inhumanity  into  the  animus  of  the  pulpit. 
"The  Last  Judgment,"  by  ^Michael  Angelo,  has 
impressed  upon  the  imagination  of  the  civilized 
world  its  marvelous  expression  of  the  physical  con- 
tortions of  retributive  pain.  Unconsciously  the 
pulpit  has  transferred  it  to  discourses  on  the  same 
theme.  The  influence  of  other  causes  has  been 
thus  augmented  in  giving  a  tinge  of  materialism 
to  the  conception  of  penal  justice.  Men  who  have 
never  seen  the  painting,  have  preached  under  an  in- 
direct iiiS|)iiation  from  it,  and  others  liVe  it.  It  is 
not  fanciful  to  doubt  whether  the  celebrated  ser- 
mon by  President  Edwards,  which  so  appalled  his 
audience  at  Enfield,  would  have  contained  its  fiery 


Oscillations  of  Faith  in  Future  Retribution.     45 

imagery  if  there  had  been  no  Michael  Angelo,  and 
no  paintings  of  the  hist  judgment. 

The  drama  also  has  exerted  a  more  obvious  in- 
fluence to  the  same  effect.  The  preaching  of  puni- 
tive justice  has  been  demoralized  by  the  taste  for 
stage-passion.  The  reflection  of  the  metropolitan 
and  the  itinerant  theaters  of  England  is  very  per- 
ceptible in  the  sermons  of  John  Knox  and  Bishop 
Latimer.  The  retributive  preaching  of  some  of 
their  inferior  contemporaries  received  from  that 
source  an  almost  malign  ferocity.  Many  things 
have  thus  conspired  to  emphasize  the  comminatory 
doctrines  of  our  faith.  They  have  often  made  the 
pulpit  a  throne  of  judgment.  Fellow-sinners  with 
their  hearers  have  preached  like  avenging  angels. 

If  space  would  permit,  it  would  be  a  deeply  in- 
teresting study  to  note  the  influence  of  popular 
profaneness,  in  interpreting  into  the  language  of 
the  pulpit  the  materialized  uses  of  biblical  symbols 
of  retribution  in  their  grossest  and  most  repulsive 
form.  Many  hearers,  by  force  of  their  own  de- 
pravity, hear  in  the  most  innocent  dialect  of  the 
pulpit  the  ideas  in  which  they  are  accustomed  to 
swear.  Such  hearers,  and  by  unconscious  sympa- 
thy other  hearers,  often  see  the  retributive  visions 
of  the  pulpit  through  this  distorting  lens  of  pro- 
faneness  in  popular  speech. 

From  such  materialism  in  both  the  pulpit  and 
the  pew,  however  it  was  created,  a  re-action  was 
sure  to  come.  Never  does  the  composite  nature 
of  the  human  mind  assert  its  claims  more  impera- 


46  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

lively  than  when  it  has  been  assailed,  long  and 
without  rest,  by  motives  of  a  somber  cast,  in  which 
the  chief  element  is  fear.  The  tendency  is  to 
either  an  intemperate  outbreak  of  religious  furor^ 
or  an  equally  intemperate  recoil.  But  for  some 
such  convulsive  relief,  the  end  would  be  an  epi- 
demic of  insanity. 

Such  was  often  the  incipient  drift  of  things 
under  the  preaching  of  retribution  which  has  been 
here  described.  In  sporadic  cases,  under  the 
preaching  of  Whitefield  and  Wesley,  it  produced 
hysteria  and  catalepsy.  But  the  great  bulk  of 
the  common  mind  never  takes  the  way  to  the  in- 
sane-asylum. On  that  mind,  the  effect  was  to 
generate  an  exasperated  antipathy  to  retributive 
ideas.  This  co-operating  with  causes  outside  of 
the  pulpit  has  wrought  out  an  intemperate  rebound 
to  the  opposite  extreme.  Now  retributive  truth 
in  any  form  rouses  defiance  rather  than  fear.  The 
pendulum  has  sw^ung  clear  over  to  the  opposite 
end  of  the  arc. 

The  signs  of  this  re-action  are  patent.  Mark 
the  relaxation  of  public  sentiment  upon  the  whole 
circle  of  truths  cognate  with  penal  justice.  What 
else  is  punishment  now  than  the  reform  of  Ujc 
criminal?  AVho  ever  emphasizes  its  penal  force 
as  an  expression  of  moral  indignation?  Penal 
justice  among  us  is  capricious  in  its  judgments, 
and  spasmodic  in  its  execution.  Thinking  \\\c.\ 
are  beginning  to  question  whether  any  tribunal 
can  be  safely  trusted  with  the  power  of  pardon. 


Oscillations  of  Faith  in  Future  Retribution.     47 

The  same  decline  is  more  obvious  in  popular 
notions  of  divine  benevolence.  In  the  biblical 
ideal,  benevolence  in  God  or  man  is  an  athletic 
virtue.  It  rules  a  moral  universe  with  stout  em- 
phasis on  mora]  principles.  Does  this  robust  ele- 
ment live  now  in  the  popular  notion  of  it?  Where? 
Is  it  not  so  thoroughly  eliminated,  that  retribution 
and  benevolence  have  become  antipathetic  ideas  ? 
They  are  things  to  be  ''reconciled"  by  adroit  casu- 
istry. The  one  must  be  "  vindicated  "  before  the 
other  can  be  trusted.  The  popular  notion  of  the 
divine  government,  therefore,  is  an  asthenic  non- 
descript, which  would  subject  any  human  admin- 
istration to  contempt.  It  is  love  without  rectitude, 
and  law  without  penalties.  Atlieistic  nihilism  can 
go  no  farther.  Such  is  the  drift  of  the  popular 
theology.  It  assumes  that  there  can  be  no  endless 
pains  for  endless  guilt,  because  the  love  of  God 
can  not  endure  either.  Scripture  or  no  Scripture, 
this  is  claimed  to  be  the  intuition  of  the  human 
mind,  and  its  decree  is  final. 

Is  not  the  pulpit  also  sliding  downi  the  slope  of 
the  popular  tastes  in  this  thing  ?  It  becomes  me 
to  inquire  rather  than  to  judge.  Are  not  many 
preachers  preaching  upon  the  benign  aspects  of 
God's  character,  disproportionately  and  effemi- 
nately ?  Does  not  an  ominous  silence  reign  upon 
the  sanctions  of  God's  law  ?  Some  months  ago  a 
comminatory  sermon  appeared  in  "  The  Congrega- 
tionalist"  from  the  pen  of  Rev.  Dr.  Channing. 
Did  not  its  stern  fidelity  strike  even  its  orthodox 


48  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

readers  with  surprise  ?  Is  not  tliat  style  of  preach- 
ing obsolescent  in  many  representative  pulpits  ? 

Now  and  then  an  exceptional  evidence  of  moral 
relaxation  startles  us.  Mormonism  astounds  the 
nation  and  the  age  by  the  shock  it  gives  to 
the  moral  sense  of  the  world.  What,  then,  is  the 
meaning  of  the  suggestion  from  a  Christian  pulpit 
of  well-known  fame,  that  that  hideous  mass  of 
putrescent  depravity  must  be  handled  with  silken 
gloves,  lest  the  suppression  of  crime  by  penal 
severity  should  make  somebody  unhappy?  Has 
it  come  to  this,  that  a  defiant  hierarchy  of  brothels 
must  be  welcomed  to  the  fraternity  of  Christian 
States,  trusting  to  the  amorous  cooing  of  politi- 
cians and  preachers,  to  win  the  "  erring  sisters " 
back  to  virtue  ? 

We  seem  to  have  fallen  under  the  reign  of  tur- 
tle-doves. The  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  has 
come.  The  atmosphere  grows  heavy  with  volup- 
tuous perfumes.  Is  this  a  sporadic  case  of  eccen- 
tric morals?  or  is  it  a  straw  which  shows  that  a 
tainted  and  pestilent  wind  is  blowing  over  the 
land?  The  most  threatening  factor  in  the  Mor- 
mon problem  is  the  effeminacy  of  public  sentiment 
among  our  own  people  respecting  the  retributive 
repression  of  crime.  We  coddle  it  when  we  ought 
to  crush  it.  Thomas  Carlyle  was  an  extremist, 
but  he  said  some  ver}^  necessar}^  truths  to  a  mor- 
ally hysteric  generation. 

What,  then,  should  be  the  polic}^  of  the  pulpit  ? 
Shall  we   concede  tliat  the  ancient  faith  is  mori- 


Oscillatio7is  of  Faith  in  Future  Bet7'ibution.     49 

bund,  and  adjust  ourselves  as  best  we  can  to  its 
doom  ?  Not  yet !  Not  quite  yet !  This  faith  has 
a  great  history.  Its  archives  are  full  of  great  con- 
quests. Let  us  possess  our  souls  in  patience,  and 
expect  another  swing  of  the  pendulum :  it  is  sure 
to  come.  The  thing  which  has  been  will  be,  as 
surely  as  gravitation  will  bring  back  the  evening 
and  the  morning  stars. 

When  Rev.  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  was  arraigned 
for  heresy  by  the  Synod  of  Cincinnati,  one  of  the 
charges  in  the  indictment  was,  that  he  had  ignored 
in  his  preaching  the  ancient  doctrine  of  divine 
sovereignty.  He  defended  his  pulpit  by  saying 
substantially  this :  "  When  I  was  ordained,  I  found 
that  the  doctrine  of  God's  sovereignty  had  been 
overworked.  It  had  been  preached  so  exclusively, 
and  in  such  extremes  of  statement,  that  the  cor- 
relative doctrine  of  human  resjjonsibility  had  got 
knocked  out  from  under;  and  I  thought  it  my 
duty  to  put  it  back  into  its  place.  This  has  been 
the  gist  of  my  heresy." 

The  venerable  father  spoke  good  theology  and 
good  sense.  So  in  these  times  of  partial  decadence, 
we  need  to  study  the  popular  affinities  in  respect 
to  those  things  in  which  the  balance  of  truth  is 
disturbed.  Then,  the  pulpit  should  throw  its 
heaviest  weights  into  the  scale  which  is  in  danger 
of  kicking  the  beam.  If  a  central  biblical  truth 
like  this  of  endless  punishment  has  "got  knocked 
out  from  under,"  the  first  business  of  the  pulpit 
should  be  to  "  put  it  back." 


60  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

Let,  then,  the  blarxd  and  winning  aspects  of  the 
gospel  be  presented  in  more  even  balance  with 
the  sterner  truths  which  lie  over  against  them. 
Discourse  more  frequently  on  the  unutterable 
guilt  of  sin.  Uncover  the  sunless  abysses  into 
which  sin  gravitates  by  its  own  weight  of  evil. 
Supplant  the  sensuous  by  the  spiritual  conception 
of  the  "  second  death."  Emphasize  the  identity  of 
guilt  and  damnation  in  the  ultimate  experience  of 
sin.  Be  as  wise  as  Milton's  Satan  in  the  discovery 
that  conscious  guilt  is  hell.  Declare  the  reality 
and  perpetuity  of  the  world  of  despair,  and  the 
appalling  doom  of  consignment  to  a  demonized 
society.  Teach  the  necessity  of  that  doom  to 
matured  guilt,  because  of  its  demonized  character 
and  its  own  supreme  choice  of  supreme  evil.  Let 
these  truths  be  re-enforced  by  discourses  upon  the 
ineffable  holiness  of  God,  the  intensity  of  His  in- 
dignation towards  wrong,  the  intrinsic  excellence 
and  serene  beauty  of  the  retributive  sentiment  in 
the  divine  mind. 

These  and  cognate  principles  should  be,  for  a 
time^  the  emphasized  message  of  the  pulpit.  Let 
it  be  intensified  by  a  refined  and  wary  fidelity  in 
the  use  of  the  biblical  emblems  of  perdition. 
With  what  Milton  calls  "  heartstruck "  convic- 
tions, revive  the  use  of  the  words  v\^hich  the  lips 
of  our  Lord  have  hallowed  for  all  time.  Keep 
them  .clear  of  unscriptural  elaborations.  Reveal 
the  Aveight  of  spiritual  significance  which  they 
carry.     Preach  them  tenderly.     Preach  them  as  a 


Oscillations  of  Faith  in  Future  Retribution.     51 

fellow-sinner  with  the  most  guilty  of  the  lost. 
But  preach  them  so  that  they  shall  seem  to  mean 
something. 

Why  should  we  take  from  unbelievers  the  horo- 
scope of  our  faith  ?  Why  accept  their  too-willing 
augury  that  it  is  moribund  ?  We  are  of  an  ancient 
and  lofty  lineage.  We  have  our  own  traditions. 
Let  us  honor  them.  If  this  doctrine  of  our  sacred 
books  is  doomed,  the  whole  system  of  which  it  is 
a  fragment  is  doomed.  The  concession  is  a  case  of 
dynamite  stowed  under  the  fort  we  are  defending. 

I  have  seen  the  statement,  that,  in  the  manu- 
facture of  porcelain,  there  is  a  process  by  which  a 
globular  ball  may  be  constructed  of  such  exquisite 
delicacy  of  material,  and  with  such  refinement  of 
art,  that,  if  so  much  as  a  scratch  be  inflicted  on  its 
surface,  the  whole  flies  into  a  thousand  atoms. 
Similar  is  the  structure  of  God's  moral  govern- 
ment. All  through  it,  from  center  to  circumfer- 
ence. He  has  wrought  His  OAvn  infinite  sensibility 
to  the  antagonism  between  right  and  wrong.  To 
His  thought,  nothing  else  in  the  universe  is  so  in- 
effably sacred.  If  He  permits  one  iota  of  it  to  be 
dishonored,  the  whole  falls  into  moral  chaos. 

Therefore  we  claim  that  this  doctrine  of  a  retri- 
bution^ commensurate  with  guilt  in  degree  and  in' 
duration^  can  not  die  out  of  human  faith.  It  is  one 
of  those  truths  which  Wordsworth  calls  "truths 
that  wake  to  perish  never."  Though  it  is  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Book,  yet  we  do  not  depend  for  it  on 
the  Book  alone.     We  depend  on  the  nature  of  the 


62  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

mind  of  God  for  its  groundwork ;  on  the  moral 
forces  of  the  universe  for  its  auxiliaries ;  on  every 
prophetic  menace  of  a  human  conscience  for  its 
confirmation ;  on  the  moral  sense  of  every  new- 
born child  for  proof  that  it  luiU  come  direct  and 
fresh  from  God,  to  the  end  of  time ;  and  on  the 
analogies  of  human  law  for  assurance  that  moral 
government  can  exist  nowhere  without  its  majestic 
and  imperative  working.  The  religious  beliefs  of 
mankind  never  can  break  loose  from  such  under- 
ground anchorage,  in  the  nature  of  things.  That 
is  a  very  sure  thing  in  the  destiny  of  one  world, 
which  has  the  moral  gravitation  of  all  worlds 
flanking  it  on  every  side  to  hold  it  in  position.  A 
moribund  theology  I     Is  the  north  star  moribund  ? 


VI. 

RETRIBUTION   IN   ITS  BIBLICAL  ATMOSPHERE. 

The  thought  has  become  a  familiar  one,  that 
every  man  has  an  atmosphere  which  he  carries  with 
him,  as  the  earth's  globe  carries  its  ambient  ether. 
Through  this  inaudible  and  invisible  envelope,  a 
man  makes  his  individuality  felt.  It  goes  out  to 
the  cognizance  of  other  men  without  words  of  his. 
A  bad  man  bears  about  him  a  tainted  atmosphere, 
the  odor  of  which  reveals  his  secret  vileness.  His 
words  may  be  lies,  yet  no  one  is  deceived.  They 
come  back  to  him,  as  dreams  are  said  to  do,  in  con- 
traries. An  ancient  legend  tells  of  a  false  echo, 
which  contradicted  every  voice  that  broke  the 
stillness  of  the  valley.  So  does  a  bad  man's 
atmosphere  belie  his  soft,  wily  speech. 

So  a  good  man  has  an  atmosphere  of  integrity. 
It  telegraphs  his  secret  life  when  he  knows  not  of 
it.  It  publishes  to  all  observers  his  unconscious 
virtues.  It  has  been  said  that  all  true  biography 
is  autobiography.  It  is  only  what  a  man  tells  of 
himself  that  comes  to  be  known  and  believed.  To 
this  should  be  added,  that  the  most  truthful  of  all 
autobiograpliv  is  that  which  a  man  tells  of  himself 
unconsciously.     A  silent   chronicler  is  always  at 

53 


64  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

the  shoulder  of  a  good  man  to  record  his  involun- 
tary graces.  At  the  final  judgment  good  men  ap- 
pear as  good  Samaritans  unawares.  ''  When  saw 
we  Thee  in  prison,  and  came  unto  Thee  ? "  In 
like  manner,  a  man  of  abounding  force,  good  or 
bad,  carries  an  atmosphere  weighted  with  power. 
Wherever  he  is,  the  atmosphere  is  surcharged  with 
electricity.  When  he  moves,  men  feel  his  move- 
ment as  they  do  the  wind  of  a  cannon-ball. 
Colossal  men  do  not  know  their  own  size. 

Similar  to  this  psychological  phenomenon  is  a 
certain  accompaniment  which  we  may  aptly  term 
their  atmosphere,  which  we  find  enveloping  great 
central  truths  as  they  appear  in  the  Scriptures. 
Many  things  enter  into  its  composition,  but  chiefly 
the  character  of  the  man  who  proclaims  a  truth, 
and  the  spirit  with  which  it  seems  to  imjDregnate 
his  own  mind.  Often  the  man  is  the  message 
more  than  his  words.  His  quickened  sensibilities 
are  the  revelation.  What  he  is,  discloses  the  mean- 
ing of  what  he  says.  The  interpretation  of  his 
words  which  is  most  consonant  with  the  animus  of 
the  man,  is  most  probably  the  true  one.  Even  his 
silences  often  put  life  into  his  utterances.  What 
he  does  not  say  has  capital  significance.  The 
Word  of  God  gives  out  no  false  echo. 

1.  It  is  instructive,  therefore,  as  a  help  to  our 
conception  of  the  idea  of  retrilmtion^  to  observe 
how  it  looks  through  its  biblical  atmosphere.  And 
in  the  first  place,  what  is  the  look  of  it  as  it 
appears  in  the  historic  records  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment? 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.        55 

The  first  tiling  that  strikes  the  reader  as  signifi- 
cant, is  that  the  principle  of  retributive  justice  is 
made  to  pervade  the  whole  history  by  means  of 
signal  and  appalling  examples.  It  is  acted  rather 
than  defined,  painted  rather  than  said.  So  far  as 
the  character  of  the  divine  government  is  there 
disclosed,  the  impression  is  made  with  ineffaceable 
distinctness,  that  sin  and  suffering  are  inseparable. 
Law  in  the  natural  world  is  more  uniform,  but  not 
a  whit  more  distinct  in  the  infliction  of  pain  on  the 
transgressor  than  the  law  of  the  moral  world  is,  as 
rejDresented  in  certain  phenomenal  events  which 
mark  epochs  in  biblical  history.  These  occur  with. 
sufficient  frequency  to  act  as  memorials  of  God  as 
a  righteous  governor  who  will  by  no  means  clear 
the  guilty.  The  moral  impression  to  this  effect  is 
even  more  vivid  for  their  occasional  occurrence. 
They  seem  to  emanate  from  the  secret  reserves  of 
a  force  whose  limitations  no  man  can  define,  and 
whose  disclosures  no  man  can  foresee.  God  comes 
out  for  the  moment  from  the  seclusion  in  which 
commonly  His  power  hides  itself,  and  strikes  a 
blow,  the  echo  of  which  reverberates  through  ages. 
Nations  quake  at  the  sound.  It  lives  for  ever  in 
the  world's  memory. 

When  we  come  to  note  the  animus  of  the  writer 
who  puts  the  facts  on  record,  we  observe  further, 
that  he  tells  the  story  with  the  most  absolute 
equanimity.  Although  his  mission  is  to  declare 
that  "  it  shall  come  to  pass  that  the  ears  of  every 
one  that  heareth  shall  tingle,"  yet  he  is  not  shocked 


56  My  Study:  and  Otlier  Essays. 

or  offended  by  the  severity  of  the  inflictions.  He 
does  not  stand  aghast  at  penal  suffering  as  an 
unnatural  phenomenon.  He  sees  nothing  in  it  in- 
human or  malevolent.  He  does  not  treat  it  as  an 
interpolation  which  disturbs  the  moral  equipoise 
of  events,  by  introducing  a  strange  element  which 
needs  to  be  explained.  Not  a  syllable  is  recorded 
in  apology  for  it,  or  in  defense  of  God's  govern- 
ment. Nothing  in  the  bearing  of  the  historian 
suggests  that  the  facts  need  explanation  or  apol- 
ogy. Penalty  under  given  conditions  is  treated  as 
the  most  natural  thing  to  happen.  The  probabili- 
ties of  history  demand  it.  Nothing  else  fits  into 
the  becoming  sequence  of  events.  The  absence  of 
it  would  be  a  vacuum  of  mystery  to  be  explained. 
Not  suffering,  but  sin,  is  the  inexplicable  phenome- 
non. The  lapse  of  man  into  its  bottomless  abysses 
is  the  appalling  tragedy. 

We  note  especially /oitr  great  catastrophic  illus- 
trations of  the  retributive  element  in  the  divine 
government  which  made  profound  impression  on 
Hebrew  character.  They  are  the  Noachian  Del- 
uge, the  volcanic  destruction  of  the  "  Cities  of  the 
Plain,"  the  miraculous  burial  of  the  Egy^Dtian 
army  in  the  Red  Sea,  and  the  extermination  of 
the  aboriginal  tribes  of  Canaan.  These  facts  we 
find  recorded  with  the  calm  dignity  of  history. 
They  are  embedded  in  the  national  annals  of  the 
Hebrews  as  symbols  of  the  character  of  the  God 
they  worshiped.  They  stand  in  their  sacred 
writings  as  memorials  of  the  faith  of  their  fathers, 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.       57 

which  they  in  turn  are  to  teach  to  their  children. 
Not  so  much  as  a  mark  of  interrogation  appears  in 
question  of  their  rectitude ;  not  a  syllable  in  vin- 
dication of  divine  benevolence.  The  writer  never 
has  the  bearing  of  a  defendant  or  an  apologist. 
He  records  the  astounding  tragedies  with  no  more 
defensive  comment  than  he  gives  to  the  story  of 
Moses  in  the  bulrushes,  or  that  of  Joseph  in  the 
well  at  Shechem.  Children  reading  the  volume 
consecutively  are  sensible  of  no  shuddering  or 
recoil  on  the  part  of  the  writer  in  its  retributive 
pages. 

The  tragic  narratives  are  intrinsically  natural. 
That  a  world  wallowing  in  the  filth  of  moral 
putridity  should  be  indignantly  buried  from  the 
offended  eye  of  the  universe  by  avenging  waters  ; 
that  cities  steeped  in  vices  to  which  language  could 
give  no  other  name  than  theirs  should  be  swept  off 
the  face  of  the  earth  by  a  storm  of  fire ;  that  Na- 
ture herself  should  suspend  the  operation  of  her 
laws,  that  the  oppressor  of  God's  people,  the  rep- 
resentative of  a  tyranny  of  four  hundred  years, 
might  be  ingulfed  in  the  sea ;  that  idolatrous  races 
whose  stock  was  already  caving  in,  in  their  corrup- 
tion, should  be  crowded  to  their  doom  to  make 
way  for  more  virile  blood  and  a  nascent  theocracy, 
—  all  these  things  occur  in  the  inevitable  course 
of  nature,  and  as  such  they  are  recorded.  They 
are  monumental  tokens  of  God's  righteousness. 
The  doomed  ones  were  monuments  of  guilt :  they 
must  be  made  monuments  of  retribution.    As  such 


58  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

they  must  go  into  tlie  world's  history,  and  abide 
there  for  ever.  This  is  the  story  and  the  whole 
of  it. 

When  a  traveler  wanders  over  the  excavated 
ruins  of  Pompeii,  and  notes  the  evidences  of  the 
moral  corruption  of  the  generation  entombed  there, 
he  feels  that  it  was  well  to  bury  such  a  depraved 
civilization  from  the  sight  of  men.  Science  may 
say  what  it  will  of  nature's  law  in  the  catastro^^he. 
He  reads  there  a  profounder  statute  than  any  of 
nature's  teaching.  It  declares  eternal  justice  in 
the  ruin  around  him.  Something  in  his  own  being 
responds  to  it  as  a  decree  of  God.  He  tells  the 
story  to  his  children  without  misgiving.  He  knows 
that  to  the  moral  sense  of  childhood  it  will  speak 
for  itself.  It  needs  no  apology  or  defense.  He 
says,  "Here  men  offended  a  holy  God  by  their 
putrid  vices,  and  here  He  laid  His  iron  hand  upon 
them  in  retribution." 

So  it  is  that  the  Hebrew  historian  records  the 
retributive  catastrophes  of  the  ancient  world.  He 
declares  them  with  the  same  equipoise  of  feeling 
with  which  he  pictures  in  backward  prophecy  the 
six  days  of  creation.  To  these  as  to  those  he 
might  fitly  have  appended  the  finale.,  "  And  God 
saw  that  it  was  good ! "  It  is  left  to  later  times  to 
raise  tangled  questions  in  the  ethics  of  the  story, 
and  to  pile  up  volumes  of  apologetic  criticism. 
Not  a  word  of  this  seems  to  have  occurred  to  the 
contemporaries  looking  on,  or  to  the  annalist  re- 
hearsing the  tragic  history.     The  ancient  wisdom 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.        59 

saw  no  mystery  which  needed  solution.  For  the 
ancient  ethics  it  was  enough  that  retribution  was 
visited  on  guilt.  Why  should  it  not  be  so  ?  What 
else  could  be  in  its  place  ?  Penal  justice  was  riglit ; 
right  was  ultimate.  Hebrew  philosophy  held  her 
peace.  The  author  of  Ecclesiastes  indulges  in  a 
great  deal  of  skeptical  comment  on  the  vicissitudes 
of  human  life,  but  has  not  one  word  to  say  in 
doubt  of  the  rectitude  of  these  monumental  records 
of  God's  justice  in  the  sacred  books  of  his  coun- 
trymen. Those  he  seems  to  have  accepted  in 
believing  silence.  He  saw  nothing  in  them  to 
swell  the  volume  of  skeptical  inquiry.  Such  was 
the  silent  verdict  of  Hebrew  philosophy. 

But  Hebrew  piet^  was  not  content  with  acquies- 
cent silence.  It  gave  to  the  retributive  decrees 
an  approval  vocal  with  praise.  Prophets  foresaw 
them  with  complacency.  The  people  exulted  in 
them  at  their  national  festivals.  The  popular 
songs  rehearsed  them  in  the  temple-worship.  In- 
spired poets  poured  forth  imprecatory  hymns 
without  stint,  and  the  people  chanted  them  with 
accompaniment  of  lyre  and  dance.  God's  enemies 
were  their  enemies.  They  appeased  their  own 
retributive  instincts  in  celebrating  the  retributive 
achievements  of  Jehovah. 

Such  is  the  atmosphere  in  which  the  idea  of 
retribution  appears  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  Not 
that  we  find  there  no  other  than  retributive  memo- 
rials of  God.  They  are  full  of  foretokens  of  His 
redeeming  purposes.    Retributive  records  form  but 


60  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

a  fragment  of  the  whole.  But  alternating  now 
and  then  with  promises  and  blessing,  appear  these 
terrific  disclosures  and  mementos  of  avenging  law. 
Through  the  lunar  radiance  of  redemptive  grace 
runs  this  line  of  lurid  red. 

There  can  be  no  question  how  the  ancient  faith 
received  the  record  as  a  whole.  Devout  men  made 
no  election  of  part  above  part.  They  rejoiced  in 
the  story  of  punitive  justice  as  cordially  as  in 
that  of  Messianic  promise.  They  sang  the  one 
hundred  and  ninth  Psalm,  heaping  imprecations 
upen  the  enemies  of  Judah,  as  heartily  as  the 
twenty-fourth,  opening  the  gates  to  the  King  of 
Glory.  The  man  of  Hebrew  lineage  who  should 
have  looked  on  the  lyric  poetry  of  his  people  w^ith 
repugnance  because  of  its  imprecatory  songs,  would 
have  been  false  to  his  ancestral  blood. 

2.  Pass  on  now  to  the  personal  teachings  of  our 
Lord.  What  is  the  look  of  the  retributive  senti- 
ment as  it  appears  there  ?  We  are  now  in  a  new 
world.  Another  hour  has  struck :  it  is  the  me- 
ridian hour.  The  world's  thought  is  at  its  best. 
Preparatory  ages  have  brought  all  nations  to  an 
epoch  of  transcendent  progress.  New  ideas  are 
dawning.  New  institutions  are  struggling  to  the 
birth.  New  truths  are  ripening  in  minds  which 
are  one  day  to  sw^ay  the  advanced  thinking  of  the 
world.  We  miglit  plausibly  ask,  in  the  way  of 
hypothesis,  is  not  the  retributive  feature  of  the 
divine  government  among  the  old  things  which 
have  passed  away?     Is  it  not  a  fragment  of  the 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.        61 

tlieological  debris  which  tlie  world  has  outlived  ? 
Shall  we  not  look  for  it  in  the  gulf  of  revolution 
which  separates  the  modern  from  the  ancient  faith? 
We  look  back  on  dismantled  cities,  and  disinte- 
grated empires,  and  enslaved  nations,  and  exter- 
minated tribes,  and  dead  races,  and  a  depopulated 
world ;  and  we  might  plausibly  ask,  Is  not  that 
scroll  of  history  rolled  up,  and  deposited  in  anti- 
quarian libraries,  for  ever  ?  Is  it  not  time  for  the 
ingenious  benevolence  of  God  to  express  itself  in 
the  invention  of  some  more  amiable  policy  of  ad- 
ministration than  that  by  which  retributive  justice 
has  held  the  rod  of  iron  over  the  past?  May  not 
an  awe-struck  and  trembling  world  hope  for  this  ? 
Almost  the  first  page  of  our  Lord's  discourses 
gives  the  answer.  We  find  no  such  innovation 
borne  on  the  atmosphere  of  the  new  world.  We 
do  indeed  find  new  disclosures  of  the  benevolence 
of  God.  We  discover  an  innovation  of  redemp- 
tive wisdom  which  lights  up  and  interprets  all  the 
past.  But  it  is  not  such  as  to  do  away  with  the 
old  elemental  idea  of  retribution  upon  incorrigible 
guilt.  On  the  contrary,  because  of  it  that  idea  is 
re-enforced  and  intensified.  The  furnace  is  heated 
seven  times  more  than  it  was  wont  to  be  heated. 
A  design  is  obvious  to  forestall  and  forbid  the 
abrogation  of  retributive  decree  in  deference  to 
the  birth  of  Christian  liberty.  The  very  frontis- 
piece of  our  Lord's  instructions  is,  "  I  am  not 
come  to  destroy  the  Law."  His  words  emphasize 
the  declaration. 


62  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

Heretofore  retributive  threatenings  have  dealt 
chiefly  with  temporal  pains.  Their  outlook  into 
eternity  has  been  shadowy  and  uncertain.  Now 
that  immortality  looms  up  in  human  destiny,  the 
punishment  of  guilt  rises  and  expands  in  lurid 
accompaniment.  A  world  is  discovered,  in  which 
undying  guilt  is  hedged  in  and  weighed  doAvn 
with  undying  woes.  Literal  utterance  can  not 
compass  it.  Therefore  emblems  the  most  appall- 
ing that  human  sense  can  realize  to  the  imagina- 
tion are  invented  to  paint  it.  A  more  intense 
thought  of  retribution  than  was  ever  conceived  by 
comminatory  prophet  or  avenging  angel,  is  thrown 
out  into  the  theology  of  the  future.  That  is  God's 
ultimate  idea  in  His  dealing  with  incorrigible  guilt. 

In  this  climax  of  revelation  on  the  subject,  ret- 
ribution is  localized :  it  receives  the  definiteness 
of  place.  Hell  henceforth  appears  in  the  map  of 
the  universe.  A  world  wrapped  in  billows  of 
flame,  and  nauseous  with  the  fumes  of  burning 
sulphur,  becomes  the  symbol  of  retributive  pain. 
It  passes  into  the  literatures  of  nations.  Dante 
and  Milton  write  poems  upon  it  which  men  will  not 
let  die.  Genius  numbers  and  classifies  its  crowded 
population.  It  pervades  the  dominant  religion  of 
the  world.  It  dwells  as  a  thing  real  and  familiar 
in  the  thoughts  of  e very-day  life.  The  depravity 
of  men  makes  its  name  a  household  word  in  the 
dialect  of  profane  speech.  Its  murky  atmosphere 
hangs  over  deathbeds.  No  nation  or  tribe  of  an- 
cient times  possessed  in  their  religion  or  their  lit- 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.       63 

erature  so  intense  and  fearful  a  conception  of  the 
final  abode  of  guilt  as  we  have  in  the  Christian 
revelation  of  an  eternal  Hell.  And  the  teaching 
which  has  wrought  out  this  terrific  reduplication 
of  the  retributive  idea  in  human  thinking,  has  come 
from  the  lips  of  One  who  was  God's  supreme  im- 
personation of  love ! 

Let  us  inquire  further  how  does  the  great 
Teacher  Himself  seem  to  regard  His  message  in 
the  handling  of  it?  What  atmosphere  does  His 
language  and  His  personality  throw  around  it? 
Does  He  dilute  or  minimize  it  ?  Does  He  give  it 
a  gloss  of  gentle  words  ?  Does  He  conceal  it  be- 
neath hints  and  innuendoes.  Does  He  apologize 
for  it?  Does  He  labor  to  vindicate  it?  Does  He 
philosophize  about  its  necessity?  Does  He  dilate 
upon  its  intrinsic  excellence  ?  Does  He  even  con- 
descend to  prove  it  ?  Does  He  attempt  to  refute 
objections,  and  forestall  the  cavils  of  coming  ages, 
against  it  ?  Does  He  betray  by  word  or  deed,  or 
ingenuity  of  rhetorical  art,  the  shadow  of  a  cloud 
of  doubt  about  it  in  His  own  mind,  or  of  a  sus- 
picion that  it  ma}'  need  proof  or  vindication? 

Not  a  syllable  of  all  this.  Not  a  sign  appears 
of  any  of  those  ingenious  arts  of  speech  by  which 
men  betray  the  consciousness  of  a  weak  cause  or 
a  doubtful  dogma.  He  simply  says  the  word 
which  it  is  given  Him  to  say.  ''As  My  Father 
hath  taught  Me,  I  speak  these  things."  With  the 
serenity  of  conscious  Deity  He  pours  out  the  fiery 
symbols   of   indignation   against   evil   and   of  its 


64  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

swift  destruction,  with  no  word  of  comment,  or 
attempt  to  explain  or  qualify.  He  unrolls  the 
scroll  of  Judgment  on  which  is  written  in  fire 
what  He  will  do  with  the  mcorrigibly  guilty,  and 
leaves  it  there.  Such  is  the  atmosphere  in  which 
the  teachings  of  our  Lord  envelop  the  idea  of 
punitive  justice,  pure  and  simple.  It  is  an  atmos- 
phere of  sovereignty.  Other  elements  of  His  mes- 
sage reveal  other  aspects  of  His  character.  But 
this  threat  of  retribution  to  incorrigible  guilt  is 
the  forecast ,  of  a  righteous  sovereign,  just  that 
and  nothing  less. 

Our  Lord's  absolute  unconsciousness  of  having  in 
these  terrific  disclosures  uttered  any  thing  which 
a  loyal  conscience  can  recoilfrom,  is  sublime  be- 
yond the  reach  of  words.  In  no  other  message 
from  His  lips  is  the  majesty  of  His  Godhead  more 
luminous  than  in  this. 

3.  Reserving  for  a  separate  essay,  a  review  of 
the  apostolic  epistles,  let  us  note  the  biblical  as- 
pect of  the  retributive  idea  as  it  appears  in  the 
pictorial  visions  of  St.  John. 

We  have  here  a  glimpse  which  it  is  impossible 
to  misunderstand  of  the  retributive  sentiment  of 
Heaven.  How,  then,  is  the  retributive  element  in 
God's  administration  regarded  there?  Two  orders 
of  intelligence,  if  no  more,  are  there  engaged  in  re- 
searches into  the  ways  of  God.  If  spiritual  em- 
bodiment adds  any  thing  to  the  conditions  of 
human  insight  into  divine  mysteries,  that  improved 
vision  is  given  to  redeemed  men  there.     If  ages  of 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.       65 

sinless  study  of  the  great  problems  of  the  universe 
add  any  thing  to  the  means  of  their  solution,  an- 
gelic minds  possess  that  advantage  there.  If  the 
intermingling  of  the  efforts  of  different  orders  of 
mind  to  penetrate  the  deep  things  of  God,  helps 
to  clarify  and  balance  judgment  in  the  result, 
the  conditions  existing  there  must  realize  this  ad- 
vantage. It  is  not  forbidden  us  to  believe  that  all 
possible  facilities  for  making  ultimate  and  finished 
discoveries  of  truth  must  exist  there. 

There,  if  anywhere,  then,  we  should  expect  to 
find  the  element  of  penal  justice  in  the  divine  gov- 
ernment outgrown.  Are  endless  pains  for  endless 
guilt  intrinsically  antagonistic  to  the  pure  benevo- 
lence of  God  ?  and  is  the  moral  universe  destined 
to  discover  this  ?  Then,  we  should  expect  to  find 
some  hint  of  this  in  the  advanced  thinking  of  the 
redeemed.  Does  angelic  foresight  of  God's  ways 
detect  the  final  expurgation  of  retributive  devices 
from  the  divine  government?  Then,  we  should 
expect  to  receive  some  intimation  of  this  in  the 
scenic  painting  of  angelic  worship. 

There  is  a  spot  in  the  heavens  where  a  star  once 
shone  which  has  gone  out  in  darkness.  Astrono- 
mers mark  a  vacancy  on  the  chart  of  the  stellar 
universe  where  it  once  glistened.  So  we  might 
reasonably  believe,  that,  if  the  world  of  despair  is 
ever  to  be  blotted  out  of  the  government  of  God, 
the  telescopic  prevision  of  archangels  would  surely 
discover  in  anticipation  the  vacancy  which  is  one 
day  to  be  made  by  its  disappearance.     Should  we 


GQ  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

not,  then,  look  for  at  least  some  distant  and  cau- 
tious hint  of  so  stupendous  a  phenomenon  in  this 
picture  of  their  liturgic  service  ?  What  else  could 
so  profoundly  move  a  devout  universe  to  thanks- 
giving ? 

What  do  we  find,  in  fact,  in  this  revelation  of 
St.  John  ?  Not  a  word,  not  a  hint,  not  a  syllable, 
not  a  significant  silence  even,  from  which  the  most 
dexterous,  even  crafty,  exegesis  can  extort  any  such 
idea.  Angelic  and  redeemed  minds  are  in  sympa- 
thy on  this  subject.  They  take  up  the  problem 
where  earthly  research  leaves  it.  They  adoj)t  the 
same  conclusions,  and  continue  the  same  adora- 
tion of  the  divine  mystery,  which  devout  men 
have  acknowledged  here.  The  public  sentiment  of 
Heaven  is  all  one  way.  Retributive  justice  is  the 
theme  of  song.  The  surging  multitudes  before  the 
throne  exult  in  it.  It  is  not  tolerated  there  as  an 
evil  incidental  to  a  weak  government.  It  is  not 
accepted  as  a  temporary  device  necessitated  by  un- 
developed resources  or  inadequate  power.  It  is 
not  accepted  as  the  anomaly  of  a  mysterious  inter- 
regnum in  which  the  universe  is  left  to  the  work- 
ing of  merciless  law.  It  is  not  held  in  reserve  as 
a  thing  to  be  endured  in  awe-struck  silence,  or 
told  in  secret  and  in  whispers.  But  as  a  thing 
intrinsically  grand  and  excellent,  it  is  proclaimed 
aloud.  On  account  of  it,  incense  is  offered  in  ador- 
ation. The  endless  duration  of  it  is  no  offense 
to  holy  sensibilities.     That,  too,  is  a  joy  for  ever. 

And   this   condition   of  things  is   a   matter  of 


Retribution  in  its  Biblical  Atmosphere.       67 

course.  Does  the  inspired  seer  explain  it  ?  Not 
by  a  word.  Does  he  reconcile  it  with  the  benevo- 
lence of  God?  Not  by  a  syllable.  Does  he  at- 
tempt to  conceal  divine  agency  in  it,  under  cover 
of  impersonal  law  ?  Not  by  a  moment's  silence. 
No  argument  is  suggested  in  proof  of  it,  no  apol- 
ogy is  offered  for  it,  no  hint  is  given  that  it  is  a 
weak  spot  in  the  divine  economy  which  needs  re- 
enforcement.  Something  there  surely  is  in  this 
retributive  idea  as  it  is  there  conceived,  which 
speaks  for  itself  to  beings  whose  ear  is  attuned 
to  the  mysterious  disclosure.  Something  in  it 
proclaims  its  intrinsic  excellence.  Some  radiance 
from  its  interior  glory  illumines  the  very  heaven 
of  heavens.  The  assembled  hosts  are  a  unit  in 
its  recognition.  They  lift  up  their  voices  as  the 
sound  of  many  waters.  What  is  that  something 
which  so  transforms  and  glorifies  the  punitive 
justice  of  Jehovah  ?  It  can  be  but  one  thing : 
Tlie  retributive  sentiment  and  the  benevolent  senti- 
ment in  the  mind  of  Grod  are  one.  Justice  and  love 
in  the  ultimate  analysis  of  moral  ideas  are  the 
same.  Love  necessitates  justice,  and  justice  illus- 
trates love.  Thus  and  there  the  inspired  seer 
leaves  it. 

Such  is  the  atmosphere  which  the  retributive 
idea  carries  with  it  from  one  end  of  the  Scriptures 
to  the  other.  In  this  review,  one  thing  appears 
very  certain.  It  is  that  our  popular  and  inherited 
notion  of  the  place  which  retribution  holds  in  the 
divine  government,  and  of  the  nature  of  the  re- 


68  3Iy  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

tributive  sentiment  in  holy  minds,  needs  radical 
correctives  to  adjust  it  to  the  ideas  which  pervade 
the  Word  of  God.  Those  ideas  are  repugnant  to 
our  modern  tastes.  One  or  the  other  must  give 
way  in  a  re-adjustment  of  the  popular  theology. 
We  need  the  infusion  of  some  element  into  our 
theological  diathesis  which  shall  tone  up  our  faith 
in  more  profound  likeness  to  that  of  patriarchs 
and  apostles  and  our  divine  Lord.  We  need  a 
change  of  temper  like  that  which  iron  receives 
when  it  becomes  steel.  Some  suggestions  looking 
to  such  a  re-adjustment  are  reserved  for  a  subse- 
quent essay. 


VIL 
ST.   PAUL  ON  RETRIBUTION. 

In  the  construction  of  the  Scriptures,  inspira- 
tion was  wise,  we  may  reverently  say  adroit,  in 
the  selection  of  its  human  instruments.  Each 
was  fitted  to  his  mission.  The  man  and  the  junc- 
ture in  the  progress  of  revelation  which  he  repre- 
sented were  correlative.  At  any  epoch  in  the 
history  of  revelation,  therefore,  something  may  be 
learned  of  the  forthcoming  development  of  truth 
from  the  character  of  the  man  elected  to  execute 
it.  What  he  was,  will  throw  light  on  what  he 
said.  What  intimations,  then,  did  the  election  of 
St.  Paul  to  inspired  office  give  of  the  chapter 
which  it  was  his  mission  to  add  to  the  accumulat- 
ing volume  of  revelation  ? 

It  is  something  to  the  purpose  to  observe  in 
reply  that  he  was  a  man  of  large  far  seeing  and 
foreseeing  vision.  He  was  superlatively  a  man 
of  progress.  He  had  broken  away  from  a  vener- 
able faith.  It  had  been  sacred  to  him  as  the  faith 
of  an  honored  ancestry.  A  mind  like  his,  alert 
with  the  spring  of  its  transition  from  an  old  to 
a  new  theology,  was  prepared  for  any  thing  of 
the  nature  of  an  onward  movement  in  religious 

69 


70  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

thought.  He  could  not  be  wedded  to  the  old 
because  it  was  old,  nor  antipathetic  to  the  new 
because  it  was  new.  If  a  supplementary  chapter 
of  eschatolog}^  was  about  to  open  in  the  growth 
of  revelation,  he  was  the  man  above  all  others  to 
receive  it  into  his  own  faith,  and  to  ingraft  it  on 
the  faith  of  the  infant  church. 

Moreover,  he  was  a  man  of  profound  sensibili- 
ties. He  was  not  predisposed  to  ascetic  teaching 
by  the  hardness  of  his  own  mental  structure.  His 
sympathetic  nature  was  loyal  to  the  humane  side 
of  truth.  His  mind  was  intellect  and  soul,  blended 
in  perhaps  as  healthy  balance  as  is  ever  found  in 
men  of  great  force.  Though  an  acute  thinker, 
he  was  not  a  "  thinking-macliine,"  as  President 
Edwards  has  been  termed  by  his  opponents. 
Though  a  predestinarian,  and  one  who  had  the 
courage  of  his  convictions,  he  was  not  a  bigot,  as 
predestinarians  are  often  called,  nor  did  he  crowd 
his  faith  into  a  fatalistic  theology,  as  predestina- 
rians often  do.  He  originated  the  elements  of  a 
theology  to  which  JNIr.  Fronde  ascribes  the  pro- 
foundest  thinking,  and  the  most  forceful  reforms 
of  modern  times.  Yet  he  was  not  the  man  to 
sacrifice,  even  to  such  a  theology,  the  instincts  of 
a  large-hearted  humanity. 

Again,  he  had  been  elected  to  the  supreme  rank 
of  inspired  seers  in  extending  the  canon  of  revela- 
tion. He  lived  in  a  state  of  j^rophetic  vision,  he 
had  looked  upon  the  risen  and  ascended  Christ, 
he  had  been  caught  up  to  the  heaven  of  heavens. 


St.  Paul  on  Retribution,  71 

In  inspired  trance  he  had  made  discoveries  which 
his  human  tongue  could  not  utter.  His  eye  had 
been  struck  sightless  by  the  overwhelming  glory 
of  the  Lord  in  person.  The  memory  of  those 
visions  was  the  atmosphere  of  his  life.  If,  there- 
fore, any  new  truth  was  on  the  eve  of  disclosure 
concerning  the  destiny  of  man  and  the  eternal 
worlds,  he  was  of  all  men  the  man  to  know  it. 
He  above  all  men  was  fitted  to  be  its  pioneer  to 
the  faith  of  the  Church.  Of  all  men  living,  the 
man  to  whom  we  should  most  naturally  look  for 
the  discovery  of  an  improved  Christian  theodicy, 
was  St.  Paul. 

Further,  we  find  that  he  does  initiate  a  new  era 
in  the  history  of  Christian  thought.  He  is  a  dis- 
coverer, not  merely  a  teacher  of  the  ancient  faith. 
His  conversion  formed  an  ejioch.  He  was  inspired 
to  herald  advances,  even  upon  the  teachings  of 
our  Lord.  On  central  doctrines  of  our  faith,  he 
gives  us  advanced  ideas :  they  are  the  fulfillment 
of  ancient  promise.  The  immortality  of  the  soul, 
the  resurrection  of  the  body,  the  Deity  of  Christ, 
the  significance  of  the  Atonement,  the  spiritual 
import  of  the  Jewish  ritual,  the  person  and  mis- 
sion of  the  Holy  Ghost,  are  all  taught  by  St.  Paul, 
in  more  full  and  luminous  disclosure  than  by  any 
other  inspired  teacher.  Truths  upon  which  our 
Lord  was  reticent  are  taught  by  this  elect  apostle. 
Speaking  in  the  dialect  of  modern  controversy,  St. 
Paul  founded  a  new  school  of  theological  beliefs. 
Certain   great   ideas  which   form   a  compact  and 


72  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

welded  system  of  faith,  which  has  been  the  favor- 
ite of  the  more  thoughtful  minds  in  the  Church 
for  ages,  we  can  not  define  more  tersely  than  to 
call  them  the  Pauline  theology. 

Now,  in  view  of  these  preliminaries,  we  claim, 
that,  if  anywhere  in  the  Word  of  God  we  should 
look  to  find  a  new  revelation  of  eschatology,  it  is 
in  these  elaborate  and  original  epistles  of  tliis 
chief  of  apostles.  Was  the  time  ever  to  come, 
for  example,  when  a  new  interpretation  of  our 
Lord's  teachings  should  be  given  to  the  world  by 
divine  authority?  Was  any  appendix  to  them  to 
be  evolved  by  subsequent  inspiration  ?  Had  they 
any  occult  significance  which  a  later  exegesis  must 
read  between  the  lines  ?  Was  any  recondite  pi;in- 
ciple  of  interpretation,  like  that  of  Swedenborg, 
to  be  invented,  which  should  extort  from  them  a 
hidden  sense,  even  a  sense  contradictory  to  their 
obvious  reading?  Did  the  full  and  exact  truth 
require  any  re-adjustment  of  their  perspective,  to 
be  discerned  by  the  profounder  insight,  or  more 
scholarly  criticism,  of  a  coming  age  ?  Did  they 
need  any  eclipse  of  their  intensity,  any  obscura- 
tion of  their  fiery  symbols,  to  make  them  true  to 
the  ethical  instincts  of  more  enlio-htened  times  ? 

The  response  we  make  to  all  such  conceivable 
hypotheses  is,  that,  if  so,  we  should  reasonably 
look  for  such  supplementary  revelations  to  the 
writings  of  this  chief  apostle  of  progress  and  re- 
form. He  was  the  man  to  know  them,  if  they 
were  true.     He  was  the  man  to  foresee  them,  if 


St.  Paul  on  Retribution.  73 

they  were  approaching  in  the  near  or  distant 
future.  His  was  the  mind  to  take  them  in,  and 
appreciate  them,  if  they  Avere  needful  to  round 
out  the  system  of  revealed  truth.  And  he  was 
the  man  of  all  men  to  launch  them  upon  the  faith 
of  the  Christian  world. 

Yet  again,  the  conditions  of  his  apostleship 
were  unique.  He  was  a  Jew.  He  had  been  one 
of  the  most  rigid  believers  of  the  most  rigid  sect 
of  the  Jewish  Church,  yet  he  had  become  the 
supreme  apostle  to  the  Greek  and  Roman  world. 
From  one  extreme  he  had  swung  over  to  the 
other.  His  mission  now  was  to  win  to  the  new 
religion  men  whose  prepossessions  were  intensely 
antagonistic  to  Jewish  traditions. 

He  had  a  delicate  task  before  him,  therefore,  in 
his  treatment  of  any  thing  for  which  Christianity 
was  indebted  to  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  If  they 
had  transmitted  to  it  a  notion  of  retribution  which 
was  a  relic  of  a  semi-barbarous  age,  it  would  have 
been  the  part  of  wisdom  to  let  it  drop  silently 
into  oblivion.  If  that  might  not  be,  he  had  every 
inducement  to  moderate  its  severity,  to  strike  off 
the  edge  of  its  appeal  to  enlightened  consciences. 
Above  all,  he  had  good  reason,  if  his  apostolic  lib- 
erty permitted  it,  to  mitigate  the  intensity  of  the 
symbols  of  retribution  set  forth  by  the  authority 
of  One,  who,  to  the  classic  Greek  or  Roman  mind, 
was  known  only  as  the  "  crucified  Jew."  In  some 
way  the  apostle  would  have  relieved  the  mordant 
pungency  of  the  truth,  if  he  could  have  done  so 


74  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

with  fidelity  to  the  Spirit  that  was  in  him.  "  They 
of  Csesar's  househokl,"  some  of  them  of  refined 
culture  and  noble  birth,  would  have  heard  from 
him  a  tranquil  philosophic  doctrine  of  retributive 
penalty  which  would  have  been  re-actionary  in  its 
relation  to  that  of  the  ancient  Scriptures  and  of 
our  Lord. 

We  now  look  to  discover  signs  of  these  varia- 
tions and  improvements  upon  the  earlier  records. 
And  what  do  we  find  ?  Is  there  a  sentence,  word, 
or  syllable  indicative  of  a  re-actionary  movement 
of  the  apostle's  mind  ?  We  find  the  main  drift  of 
his  teachings  devoted  to  the  truths  needful  for  the 
organization  of  the  infant  church.  His  work  is 
largely  of  the  executive  order :  he  builds  founda- 
tions. The  elemental  doctrines  of  redemj^tion  are 
unfolded  with  a  fullness  and  magnificence  which 
make  his  writings  a  treasury  of  Christian  thought 
through  all  time.  Moreover,  his  instructions  in 
the  main  are  not  comminatory:  they  are  cheering 
and  commendatory.  Benedictions  are  thrown  out 
in  jets  unexpectedly,  showing  that  his  mind  is  full 
of  them.  He  enters  joyously  into  the  spirit  of  the 
new  religion  as  a  message  of  hope  and  gladness. 
Never  is  his  discourse  misanthroj)ic  or  ascetic. 
His  life  is  a  soldier's  march  of  conquest,  and  his 
anticipation  of  its  close  a  song  of  triumph.  And 
what  his  personal  faith  is,  that  also  is  the  spirit  of 
his  ministry. 

But  what  of  the  world  of  eternal  loss,  to  which 
Christ  had  but  a  few  years  before  given  such  aj)- 


St.  Paul  on  Retribution.  75 

palling  vividness?  What  has  this  hopeful,  pro- 
gressive, exultant,  triumphant  apostle  to  say  of  it  ? 
We  find  that  feature  of  our  Saviour's  teaching 
treated  by  St.  Paul  as  men  are  wont  to  treat  a 
truth  which  has  reached  its  maturity,  and  is  now 
full  grown,  and  fixed  beyond  debate.  He  accepts 
it  as  serenely  as  our  Lord  delivered  it.  He  adds 
nothing,  abstracts  nothing,  changes  nothing.  He 
explains  nothing,  proves  nothing,  vindicates  noth- 
ing. He  handles  it  as  a  truth  which  has  passed 
beyond  the  stage  of  apology  or  defense.  It  is 
embedded  in  the  groundwork  of  his  theology. 
He  has  now  only  to  build  upon  it  as  a  foundation, 
and  to  use  it  as  a  moral  force  in  his  practical 
instructions.  It  is  he  who  says  in  the  tone  of 
assured  faith,  '^  Knowing  the  terrors  of  the  Lord, 
we  persuade  men." 

How  is  it  that  other  men  are  accustomed  to 
treat  principles  or  facts  which  have  crystallized 
in  a  system  of  general  belief  or  of  social  order? 
They  treat  them  chiefly  by  casual  allusion :  they 
put  them  to  use  in  practical  affairs,  not  pausing  to 
prove  or  to  defend  them.  In  our  jurisprudence, 
for  instance,  the  principles  most  firmly  rooted  in 
civilized  government  find  no  statement  in  statute- 
books.  They  exist  unwritten,  as  common  law: 
they  are  recognized  as  authorities  by  courts  and 
juries.  Men  build  empires  and  republics  upon 
them  without  once  putting  them  into  written 
speech.  So,  in  ordinary  life,  usages  and  prece- 
dents which  have   the   j)^estige   of  the   common 


76  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

consent,  we  do  not  constantly  re-affirm  and  vindi- 
cate. We  take  them  for  granted.  We  speak  of 
them  allusively.  Our  discourse  about  them  is 
fragmentary.  We  use  them  as  things  which  no- 
body assails,  because  nobody  denies.  Nobody  asks 
for  proof,  because  nobody  doubts. 

Thus  it  is  that  St.  Paul  handles  the  retributive 
teachings  of  the  elder  Scriptures.  He  treats  them 
mainly  by  allusion  here  and  there.  He  assumes 
them,  hints  at  them,  gives  a  glimpse  of  them,  and 
passes  on.  But  never  are  they  contradicted :  never 
are  they  blinked  or  evaded.  He  does  not  ignore 
our  Lord's  most  terrific  symbol  of  them.  He  ap- 
plies them  to  the  demands  of  his  case  in  hand  with 
the  same  calmness  of  assurance  with  which  Christ 
proclaimed  them.  No  more  here  than  there  do 
we  find  apology  or  argument  or  reserve  of  truth. 
Never  by  a  word,  or  by  silence,  or  by  speech 
askance,  is  the  idea  suggested  of  any  possible  mis- 
understanding of  those  symbols.  He  says  nothing 
to  arouse  a  suspicion  that  they  may  not  mean 
what  they  seem  to  mean.  Still  less  is  any  hint 
given  of  their  retraction  or  displacement  by  later 
revelations,  or  their  obsolescence  through  unfitness 
to  later  ages. 

We  find  nothing,  for  example,  in  the  apostle's 
theologic  temper  corresponding  to  that  suspense 
of  faith  in  which  infirm  believers  search  for  some 
j^ossible  loophole  of  escape  from  the  obvious  mean- 
ing of  our  Lord's  discourse.  St.  Paul  is  the  syno- 
nym of  courage.     He  is  a  man  of  positive  ideas. 


St.  Paul  on  Retribution.  77 

What  he  believes,  he  knows.  His  theology  con- 
tains no  half-truths.  His  words  suggest  no  lurking 
doubts  underneath.  As  on  all  other  themes,  so 
on  this  of  retributive  decrees,  his  deliverances  are 
those  of  a  believer  who  has  no  misgivings.  The 
words,  "know,"  "knowing,"  and  their  correlatives, 
are  favorites  in  his  vocabulary.  More  than  one 
hundred  times  they  occur,  and  generally  in  such 
connections  that  their  force  is  intensive.  So  it  is 
that  positive  men  put  their  case,  and  so  it  is  that 
this  most  positive  of  men  puts  the  fact  of  retri- 
bution. "  Knowing  the  terrors  of  the  Lord,"  he 
says  what  it  is  given  him  to  say. 

Theologians  may  be  classified  as  the  men  who 
believe,  and  the  men  who  know.  St.  Paul  belonged 
pre-eminently  to  the  latter  class.  In  the  Koran, 
it  is  said  that  the  word  "  assuredly "  sometimes 
stands  in  the  original  as  a  sentence  by  itself. 
Mahomet,  like  all  predestinarians,  was  an  assured 
thinker.  He  had  no  doubts :  he  believed  in  his 
religion  when  he  alone  believed  it.  This  is  the 
style  of  mind  which  St.  Paul  represented.  The 
tone  of  unqualified  assurance  runs  through  all  his 
teachings  on  the  subject  of  retribution. 

\Ye  run  the  eye  at  random  over  the  pages  most 
dense  with  the  Pauline  theology,  and  we  find  in 
broadcast  those  allusive  fragments  of  speech  which 
form  the  boldest  utterances  of  truth,  because  they 
are  the  words  of  a  mind  consolidated  in  its  convic- 
tions, and  at  ease  from  doubts.  We  catch  them  in 
glimpses  like  these ;   viz.,  "  The   Lord   Jesus  re- 


78  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

vealed  in  flaming  fire."  "Taking  vengeance  on 
them  that  know  not  God."  "  That  all  might  be 
damned  who  believe  not  the  trnth."  "  Tribula- 
tion and  anguish  upon  every  soul  that  doeth  evil." 
"Enemies  of  Christ  whose  end  is  destruction." 
"  The  wrath  of  God  revealed  from  heaven." 
"  Fearful  looking  for  of  judgment  and  fiery  indig- 
nation." "  A  fearful  thing  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  the  living  God."     "  God  is  a  consuming  fire." 

Such  is  the  method  chiefly  of  the  Pauline  records 
in  handling  the  fact  of  retribution.  By  allusion 
here,  and  by  partial  statement  there,  and  undoubt- 
ing  utterance  everywhere,  the  apostle  throws  out 
retributive  ideas  as  if  they  were  a  thing  of  course, 
and  would  carry  their  own  authority.  No  more 
to  him  than  to  our  Lord  does  it  seem  to  occur  that 
the  appalling  truth  needs  vindication,  or  that  it 
will  shock  a  loyal  conscience.  He  uses  it  without 
reserve  or  cautious  speech  as  a  thing  fixed  and 
familiar  in  the  beliefs  of  men.  He  uses  it  as  men 
use  the  rainfalls  and  the  tides.  That  men  profess- 
ing to  believe  in  the  inspiration  of  St.  Paul,  should, 
in  the  face  of  these  records,  believe  also  that  end- 
less retribution  can  not  exist  in  the  universe  of 
God,  or  that  it  can  not  be  inflicted  for  the  sins 
of  this  life,  is  an  astounding  phenomenon  in  the 
history  of  religious  faith.  Even  a  doubt  or  a  hypo- 
thetical belief  on  the  subject  by  such  a  believer  is 
a  sign  of  an  erratic  mind. 

For  the  sake  of  the  contrast,  let  us,  for  the 
moment,  make  the  Pauline  theology  on  this  theme 


St.  Paul  on  Retribution,  79 

hypothetical.  Let  us  contrive  to  relax  the  posi- 
tiveness  of  the  Pauline  style  of  discussion  in  the 
glimpses  it  gives  of  retributive  penalties.  Put 
into  it  hints  of  the  doubts  and  the  half-beliefs  and 
the  hy23otheses  of  suspended  faith  by  which  modern 
theology  is  often  enervated.  How  do  such  frag- 
mentary Scriptures  as  these  read  ?  viz.,  "  If  the 
Lord  should  be  revealed  in  flaming  fire."  "  Per- 
haps taking  vengeance  on  them  that  know  not 
God."  '•^  Per  adventure  that  they  might  be  damned 
who  believe  not."  "  Tribulation  and  anguish  may 
come  upon  souls  that  do  evil."  "  Enemies  of 
Christ  whose  end  possibly  is  destruction."  "  Ves- 
sels of  wrath  probably  fitted  for  destruction."  "  If 
the  wrath  of  God  sJiould  be  revealed  from  heaven." 
"  W7io  hioivs  but  that  God  is  a  consuming  fire  ? " 
"We  conjecture  that  fearful  looking  for  of  judg- 
ment may  remain."  "  Siij)pose  that  it  be  a  fearful 
thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  God."  "  Suspecting 
the  terrors  of  the  Lord." 

Put  an  "if"  before,  and  an  "if"  behind,  and 
scatter  "ifs"  all  through  this  Pauline  theology, 
and  how  does  it  match  what  we  know  of  the  Paul- 
ine character  ?  Has  it  the  sound  of  apostolic  sua- 
sion ?  Has  it  the  ring  of  inspired  speech  ?  Who 
would  ever  be  moved  by  it  to  fear  the  wrath  of  an 
offended  God  ?  Yet  is  it  not  a  fair  expression  of 
the  dubious  and  volatile  faith  with  which  many 
in  our  day  are  dallying  with  the  stupendous  veri- 
ties of  biblical  retribution  ?  Is  it  not  the  kind  of 
inspired  Scriptures  required  by  that  state  of  mind 


80  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

in  which  men  come  to  the  Word  of  God  prepos- 
sessed with  the  conviction  that  a  retributive  the- 
ology is  not  to  be  found  there,  must  not  be  found 
there,  because  of  the  debilitated  "  ethical  instincts  " 
which  can  not  bear  a  disclosure  of  the  indignation 
of  God  against  sin? 

Fragmentary  allusion  and  practical  assumption, 
however,  are  not  all  that  the  Pauline  theology 
advances  concerning  retributive  truth.  We  find 
two  distinct  affirmations  which  have  great  signifi- 
cance in  the  framework  of  the  retributive  senti- 
ment as  it  appears  in  apostolic  thinking. 

One  is  the  positive  declaration  that  life  in  this 
world  without  a  knowledge  of  Christ  constitutes 
an  adequate  probation,  —  adequate  for  the  purposes 
of  a  fixed  destiny  in  eternity.  In  the  first  chapter 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  the  chief  premise, 
w^ithout  which  the  argument  amounts  to  nothing, 
is  the  sufficiency  of  the  light  of  nature  to  give 
to  the  heathen  conscience  a  knowledge  of  God. 
Then,  it  must  be  sufficient,  and  the  apostle  assumes 
this,  to  give  an  equitable  moral  trial.  The  whole 
force  of  that  magnificent  reasoning  is  invalid,  ex- 
cept on  the  assumption  that  men  ignorant  of  the 
Christian  faith  have  an  equitable  trial.  In  the 
dialect  of  the  world,  they  have  a  "fair  chance." 
Even  under  the  moral  obliquities  of  hereditary 
paganism,  man,  so  long  as  the  stars  glisten,  and 
the  sun  rises,  and  the  rivers  flow,  has  that  above 
and  around  him  which  proves  to  him  a  living  God. 

No  example  of  pagan  character  could  be  a  fairer 


St.  Paul  on  Retribution,  81 

test  of  the  question  than  that  which  St.  Paul  had 
before  him  in  the  Roman  civilization.  If  that  ex- 
ample could  not  test  it,  none  could.  Yet  he  gives 
his  verdict  with  no  intimation  of  a  doubt  or  an 
exception.  Man  without  Christ  can  know  God. 
The  proof  is  ample.  The  force  of  it  is  patent  to 
his  every  sense.  If  he  refuses  to  know  God,  he  is 
without  excuse.  If  he  is  incorrigible  in  that  re- 
fusal, his  damnation  is  just.  The  indignation  of 
God  is  righteously  displayed  in  his  destruction. 
The  apostle  puts  it  in  no  siken  speech.  "Is 
God  unrighteous  who  taketh  vengeance?  God 
forbid!" 

If  the  Pauline  idea  of  retributive  decrees  had 
been  purposely  so  developed  as  to  forestall  the 
modern  objection  to  their  infliction  on  men  who 
have  not  known  and  rejected  Christ,  it  could  not 
have  achieved  that  purpose  more  explicitly  or 
conclusively.  That  punishment  can  not  be  justly 
inflicted  on  sinners  outside  of  a  Christocentric 
system  of  probation,  certainly  never  entered  the 
mind  of  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 

The  other  declaration,  equally  significant,  is  to 
the  same  purpose.  It  is  that  a  knowledge  of 
Christ  aggravates  the  retributive  experience  of 
those  who  know  and  reject  Him.  That  is  to  say, 
so  far  is  it  from  being  essential  to  the  equity  of 
moral  trial  that  men  must  be  put  into  the  Chris- 
tian range  of  belief  and  opportunity,  that  the 
working  of  such  privilege,  if  abused,  is  to  augment 
both  guilt   and   penalty   already   incurred.     The 


82  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  whoever  was  its  author, 
may  be  fairly  taken  as  a  representative  of  the 
Pauline  theology.  Its  argument  turns  in  part  on 
this  pivot :  "Of  how  much  sorer  punishment  shall 
he  be  thought  worthy  who  hath  trodden  under 
foot  the  Son  of  God !  " 

Although  the  apostle  is  not  contrasting  here  the 
light  of  nature  and  the  light  of  revelation,  yet  he 
distinctly  recognizes  the  principle  that  probation 
is  a  matter  of  degrees.  This,  in  its  bearing  on  the 
subject  in  hand,  can  mean  but  one  thing.  Chris- 
tian birth  and  training  do  not  create  the  probation 
to  which  man  is  subjected  here.  They  intensify 
that  probation.  The  rejection  of  the  Christian 
offer  of  salvation  does  not  create  the  doom  of  in- 
corrigible guilt,  nor  is  it  essential  to  the  justice  of 
that  doom.  It  aggravates  both  the  guilt  and  its 
penal  consequences. 

Two  distinct  systems  of  moral  trial  are  here 
going  on.  One  is  superinduced  upon  the  other. 
The  light  of  nature  illumines  the  one  :  the  light  of 
revelation  illumines  the  other.  Each  is  complete 
in  its  way.  Trial  under  either  is  perfect  in  its 
kind.  Guilt  under  either  is  proportioned  to  its 
conditions.  Punishment  under  either  is  graduated 
to  guilt.  Thus  the  Pauline  conception  of  retribu- 
tive inflictions  comes  into  exact  line  with  the 
teachings  of  the  elder  Scriptures  and  with  the 
disclosures  of  our  Lord.  Starting  from  different 
points  of  departure,  they  all  converge  to  one  result ; 
viz.,  that  retribution  commensurate  with  guilt  in 


St  Paul  on  Retribution,  83 

degree  and  in  duration  is  a  law  of  the  moral  uni- 
verse which  the  retributive  sentiment  in  the  mind 
of  God  requires.  It  is  a  law,  therefore,  to  which 
minds  loyal  to  God  take  no  exception,  and  ascribe 
no  wrong. 


vni. 

CORRECTIVES  OF  THE   POPULAR  FAITH  IN 
RETRIBUTION. 

PART  I. 

The  biblical  idea  and  the  popular  idea  of  retri- 
bution are  wide  apart.  To  assimilate  the  two,  the 
23opular  idea  needs  certain  corrective  and  tonic 
appliances,  which,  for  the  most  part,  are  seldom 
thought  of. 

1.  One  is  a  more  distinct  recognition  of  the 
infirmity  under  which  the  human  mind  labors  in 
forming  a  judgment  of  the  retributive  element 
in  the  government  of  God.  Conscience  once  un- 
balanced by  the  overweight  of  wrong,  tends  to  an 
underestimate  of  the  wrong.  It  inclines  to  dis- 
placency  towards  the  whole  working  of  moral 
government  which  condemns  and  punishes  wrong. 
Conscience  thus  distorted  is  like  the  needle  de- 
flected by  a  disturbing  magnet. 

Such  is  the  condition  of  the  human  mind  in 
forming  its  ideas  of  retributive  suffering.  Man  is 
not  an  impartial  judge  of  God  in  this  thing.  We 
live  under  violated  law.  Our  life  is  an  interval 
of  reprieve  between  sentence  and  execution.     We 

84 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Ret^'ihution,  85 

naturally  feel  repugnance  to  both,  and  to  tlie  law 
which  demands  them.  Our  instinct  is  to  assume 
an  attitude  of  glum  resistance.  This  matures  into 
defiance.  We  fling  our  concentrated  and  angered 
will  against  the  will  of  God.     The  old  couplet,  — 

"  N"o  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw, 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law," 

expresses  in  homely  phrase  the  natural  mood  of 
man  towards  comminatory  decrees.  We  under- 
rate the  evil  of  sin.  We  gloss  it  over  with  smooth 
vocabulary.  We  expurgate  from  our  dialect  the 
words  most  expressive  of  its  enormity.  We  in- 
fold it  in  the  contradictions  of  fatalistic  philosophy. 
When  nothing  else  will  do,  we  laugh  at  it.  A 
multitude  of  the  facts  and  fancies  on  which  the 
risible  faculties  of  men  disport  themselves  are  vaga- 
ries of  sin.  Probably  more  than  half  of  the  moni- 
tions of  awakened  consciences  are  drowned  in 
laughter.  The  laugh  of  guilt  is  as  distinct  from 
that  of  innocent  amusement  as  that  of  insanity. 

We  calumniate  the  divine  government  of  sin. 
We  call  penalty  vengeance,  and  law  tyranny.  We 
disguise  transgression  into  a  shadow  of  virtue. 
This  is  a  world  of  men  and  women  in  masks.  Lit- 
erature paints  vice  as  force  of  character.  Poetry 
makes  heroes  of  vile  men.  When  will  the  world 
decide  upon  Milton's  Satan,  whether  to  hate  him, 
or  to  admire?  In  popular  fiction,  it  is  the  dull 
men  who  pray :  the  geniuses  drink  hard  and  swear. 
Mother-wit  is  oftener  profane  than  reverent.     Phi- 


86  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

losophy  follows  in  the  same  track.  It  indulges  in 
wire-drawn  speculations  upon  the  consistency  of 
penal  justice  with  benevolence,  till  the  old,  plain, 
homespun  notion  of  guilt  is  ''  in  wandering  mazes 
lost."  Milton  hinted  at  a  profound  truth  when  he 
remanded  such  speculations  to  the  world  of  Pan- 
demonium. In  the  ultimate  issue,  the  whole  idea 
of  retributive  inflictions  becomes  abhorrent  to  our 
silken  tastes.  We  jump  to  conclusions  which  de- 
throne God.     Then  what  ? 

This  deterioration  of  moral  sense  needs  to  be 
reversed.  We  need  to  go  back  to  the  beginning, 
and  start  anew,  taking  God's  idea  of  retribution 
as  our  model.  There  is  in  every  erect  conscience 
an  element  of  robustness  which  does  not  flinch  at 
the  spectacle  of  pain  inflicted  on  wrong.  Shak- 
speare  has  the  opposite  weakness  in  mind  when  he 
makes  Hamlet,  in  self-reproach  for  not  having 
avenged  his  father's  murder,  say,  "I  am  pigeon- 
livered,  and  lack  gall."  We  are  all  "  pigeon-liv- 
ered"  in  our  natural  mood  towards  the  penal 
consequences  of  sin.  Guilt  enervates  our  moral 
judgments.  On  no  other  subject  of  human  thought 
do  we  need  more  profoundly  the  tonic  of  moral 
sympathy  with  God. 

2.  Further,  for  truthful  convictions  on  this  sub- 
ject, we  need  a  cordial  recognition  of  the  intrinsic 
excellence  of  the  retributive  sentiment  in  a  right 
mind.  This  is  the  vital  point  of  our  departure 
from  the  divine  ideal  in  this  thing.  We  repel 
from  us  the  retributive  idea  because  we  mask  it  in 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retribution,  87 

unrighteousness.  We  make  wrong  right,  and  right 
wrong ;  evil  good,  and  good  evil.  That  which  in 
the  divine  government  is  vindicative  of  right,  we 
degrade  into  the  vindictive.  The  fragment  of  a 
syllable  may  be  the  pivot  on  which  our  thought 
turns  into  hostility  to  one  of  the  most  amiable 
attributes  of  the  divine  character.  That  senti- 
ment which  uplifts  holy  minds  into  adoring  song 
in  view  of  God's  judgments,  is  the  sense  of  the 
intrinsic  excellence  of  retributive  dealings  with 
sin. 

What  is  sin  in  the  last  analysis?  It  is  pure 
malignity.  It  ripens  into  malign  passion  towards 
God.  This  is  the  germ  and  the  efflorescence  and 
the  fruitage  of  it.  The  retributive  sentiment  in 
all  right  minds  is  the  opposite  to  this.  It  is  noth- 
ing else  than  an  instinctive  antagonism  to  malign 
character.  It  is  hatred  of  that  which  hates  God. 
Its  assumption  is,  that  it  is  right  to  punish  that 
which  hates  God,  and  that  in  the  nature  of  things 
such  punishment  is  a  necessity.  Like  all  other 
right  things,  righteous  punishment  is  intrinsically 
good.  Minds  loyal  to  God  approve  it,  delight  in 
it,  find  in  it  a  profound  satisfaction  to  something 
within  them  which  refuses  to  be  at  peace  without 
it.  Pure  justice  is  pure  benevolence.  Justice 
and  love  are  twin  stars  of  a  binary  constellation, 
in  which  each  revolves  at  the  bidding  of  the  other. 
This  Avas  the  sentiment  Avhich  inspired  the  impre- 
catory Psalms.  This  it  is  that  inspires  gratulatory 
song  in  heaven  in  view  of  God's  retributive  deal- 


88  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

ing  with  guilt.  To  hate  guilt,  or  to  hate  God,  this 
is  the  alternative.  To  punish  guilt,  or  to  anni- 
hilate God,  this  is  the  dilemma.  Sin  matured 
brings  these  intense  extremes  into  contrast  and  col- 
lision, and  the  loyalty  of  right  minds  in  heaven 
or  on  earth  does  Hot  waver  in  its  choice. 

In  certain  conditions  of  things  in  this  world,  we 
all  feel  the  excellence  of  retribution.  Exigencies 
occur,  in  which,  with  the  whole  concentrated  force 
of  our  being,  we  exult  in  retributive  inflictions. 
Head  Milton's  sonnet  on  the  slaughter  in  Pied- 
mont :  — 

"  Avenge,  O  Lord!  thy  slaughtered  saints,  whose  bones 
Lie  scattered  on  the  Alpine  mountains  cold!" 

What  is  the  meaning  of  the  passionate  appeals 
to  Heaven,  of  which  all  free  literatures  are  full, 
for  the  justice  of  an  avenging  Power  to  fall  on 
tyrants  ?  Are  they  all  delusions  ?  Are  they  inhu- 
man and  malign  ?  If  they  are,  the  best  poetry  in 
history  is  a  cheat.  We  must  expurgate  our  li- 
braries, and  commit  their  noblest  treasures  to  the 
flames.  What  means  that  human  instinct  of  all 
nations  and  ages,  which  voiced  itself  in  Hebrew 
jurisprudence,  "  Whoso  sheddeth  man's  blood,  by 
man  shall  his  blood  be  shed  "  ? 

"  For  murder-stroke  shall  murder-stroke  be  paid." 

Come  down  to  the  trasfedies  of  common  life  and 
recent  history.  When  Jesse  Pomeroy  allured  a 
little  ghi  to  a  desolate  spot,  and  there,  while  she 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retribution.  89 

begged  for  life  and  mother,  mangled  her  hands 
and  face  with  a  shoemaker's  knife  in  malign  blood- 
thirst,  and  then  murdered  his  victim  to  hide  his 
crime,  what  said  the  public  sentiment  of  Massa- 
chusetts? Did  not  something  in  us  all  —  man, 
woman,  and  child  —  rise  up,  and  demand  the  pun- 
ishment of  the  wretch  ?  We  called  him  miscreant, 
brute,  wild  beast,  fiend.  No  superlatives  could 
exaggerate  our  indignation.  The  Sovereign  State 
sprang  to  its  feet  to  crush  him.  That  on  a  dimin- 
utive scale  was  the  retributive  sentiment  in  right- 
eous outburst. 

When  we  read  Motley's  story  of  the  Nether- 
lands, and  image  to  ourselves  the  scene  of  men 
burning,  women  buried  alive,  and  children  tossed 
from  bayonet  to  bayonet,  for  Avorshiping  the  God 
of  their  fathers,  do  we  not  refuse  to  be  at  peace 
till  our  indignation  is  in  some  way  appeased  ?  The 
doctrine  of  a  day  of  judgment  becomes  an  exceed- 
ing comfort.  "  There  are  Scriptures  Avritten  in- 
visibly on  men's  hearts  which  do  not  come  out  till 
they  are  enraged."  They  become  legible  only 
under  the  white-heat  of  moral  wrath. 

When  the  sentiment  of  judicial  anger  is  thus 
set  aflame,  we  all  understand  the  imprecatory 
Psalms.  We  are  not  squeamish  in  their  interpre- 
tation, lest  their  severity  might  shock  velvet  tastes. 
We  read  them  with  eyes  like  steel.  They  say 
what  we  feel  as  nothing  else  does,  and  we  under- 
stand why  they  are  inserted  in  the  Word  of  God. 
We  thank  God  for  the   prophetic   glimpse   they 


90  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

give  us  of  a  day  of  reckoning  when  things  will 
be  balanced. 

It  is  recorded  of  the  Rev.  John  Ryland,  an 
English  dissenting  clergyman,  that  on  one  occa- 
sion he  listened  to  a  recital  of  the  horrors  of  the 
slave-trade.  He  was  so  overAvhelmed  by  the  story 
of  the  "middle  passage,"  that  he  lost  his  self- 
control.  He  paced  the  floor  in  an  almost  frantic 
agony  of  indignation,  and  exclaimed,  "  O  God ! 
preserve  me.  O  God !  preserve  me."  At  length 
the  cultured  reverence  of  years  gave  way :  proba- 
bly the  profane  habits  of  his  youth  came  back  like 
a  flood  upon  him.  He  broke  out  into  a  volley  of 
imprecations  upon  the  perpetrators  of  such  out- 
rages upon  God  and  man.  Can  we  find  it  in  our 
hearts  to  blame  him  ? 

This  is  the  retributive  sentiment.  Do  we  not 
revere  the  man  who  feels  it,  more  than  the  man 
whose  frigid  soul  is  void  of  it?  Who  feels  respect 
for  the  paralytic  sensibilities  which  condemn  it? 
Grant  that  it  is  a  perilous  virtue  :  still  it  is  a  virtue. 
Under  the  restrictions  of  right  conscience,  it  is  a 
noble  thing  to  feel  and  to  obey.  A  late  writer,  in 
describing  the  person  of  Daniel  Webster  in  mo- 
ments of  oratorical  passion,  speaks  of  his  "  splendid 
wrath,"  in  which  "  his  eyes  became  lamps."  Just 
that  is  the  sense  of  retributive  justice  when  it 
is  set  on  fire  by  a  great  wrong.  No  government 
void  of  it  is  either  great  or  wise  or  good.  In  the 
administration  of  a  holy  government,  like  that  of 
God,  it  is  pure  benevolence  —  that,  nothing  less. 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retrihution.  91 

He  would  be  less  than  Gocl  if  lie  did  not  feel  it  : 
we  are  less  than  men  if  we  do  not  reverently  sym- 
pathize Avith  Him  in  it.  Until  we  can  do  this,  our 
whole  conception  and  judgment  of  eternal  retribu- 
tion inflicted  on  eternal  guilt  will  be  twisted  awry. 
Our  puny  impulses  of  compassion  for  the  guilty 
will  set  themselves  against  His  grand,  robust  be- 
nevolence. We  shall  find  ourselves  resisting  with 
maudlin  tears  that  which  the  great  Heart  of  the 
universe  approves  exultingly. 

3.  Another  corrective  of  our  views  of  the  retrib- 
utive element  in  the  divine  government  is  a  more 
adequate  conviction  than  that  which  commonly  ex- 
ists of  the  freedom  and  sovereignty  of  the  human 
will.  Here,  perhaps,  is  the  point  of  supreme  weak- 
ness in  the  moral  convictions  of  men.  It  is  made 
such  by  two  prolific  sources  of  evil.  One  is,  that 
sin  itself  tends  to  enervate  man's  consciousness 
that  he  is  free.  The  freedom  is  in  him,  sovereign 
and  intact,  under  any  accumulations  of  depravity : 
but  the  consciousness  of  it  is  debilitated ;  and  the 
evidence  of  the  fact,  therefore,  from  that  source  is 
impaired.  Men  read  it  awry,  and  sometimes  back- 
ward or  upside  down,  —  in  any  way  that  shall 
confute  conscience,  or  give  it  the  lie. 

The  other  evil  is,  that  we  have  inherited  from 
the  past  an  immense  legacy  of  fatalistic  philosophy. 
Pagan  theology  is  the  science  of  "the  Fates." 
Heathen  poetry  celebrates  resistless  destiny.  The 
tragedies  of  JEschylus  recognize  no  superior  divin- 
ity.     Our    English   literature    is    pervaded   with 


92  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays, 

the  notion  tliat  sin  is  a  constitutional  disease. 
Guilt  shares  responsibility  with  ill-luck.  As  Lord 
Byron  puts  it,  "Man  is  an  unlucky  rascal." 
Christian  theology,  all  along  the  line  of  its  his- 
tory, has  had  to  contend  with  this  inherited 
tyranny  of  fatalism.  Our  old  historic  creeds, 
which  contain  the  best  thought  of  Christian  ages, 
bear  scars  significant  of  the  conflict.  Some  of 
them  jump  the  difficulty  by  flat  contradictions. 
Slowly  and  with  militant  tread  has  the  truth  of 
the  freedom  of  the  will  toiled  up  the  highway 
of  our  modern  faith.  Not  yet  even  has  it  laid  off 
its  coat  of  mail. 

Meanwhile,  other  central  truths  of  our  theology 
have  been  kept  in  practical  abeyance  by  the  want 
of  an  uncompromising  conviction  of  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  human  will  over  belief,  over  conduct, 
over  character,  over  every  thing  that  makes  a  man, 
and  therefore  over  destiny.  One  illustration  of 
this  is,  that  the  moral  glory  of  retribution  has 
been,  and  is  still,  under  an  eclipse.  We  behold  it 
through  clouds  and  darkness.  If  sin  is  a  joredes- 
tined  necessity,  to  punish  it  would  be  infinitely 
more  criminal  than  the  sin.  If  temptation  rises 
above  the  level  of  will-power,  and  drowns  it  out, 
or  even  momentarily  submerges  it,  so  that  the 
consciousness  of  its  supremacy  expires",  sin,  inider 
such  conditions,  is  no  more  sin.  Penalty  for  crime 
in  such  circumstances  is  malevolent  torture.  Llan 
thus  caught  in  the  toils  of  fate  is  no  more  a  sinner, 
but   a  victim.     Inherited   depravity,    if  it   could 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retrihution.  93 

exist,  would  be  only  inherited  misfortune.  Inher- 
ited degeneracy  does  exist,  and  that  is  misfortune. 
Inherited  depravity  is  quite  another  thing.  The 
damnation  of  a  soul  for  it  would  be  an  outrage 
upon  the  moral  sense  of  the  universe :  it  would 
exalt  the  sufferer  to  the  rank  of  martyr.  He 
would  be  the  superior  of  his  judge.  Moral  gov- 
ernment built  on  such  acts  of  retribution  would 
be  the  supreme  of  all  tragedies.  It  would  be  the 
government  of  a  malignant  God. 

It  must  have  been  some  such  notion  as  this  of 
man's  lapsed  estate,  that  led  Carlyle  to  say  in  one 
of  his  cynical  moods,  "  If  hell  must  be  dared,  it 
must."  Under  the  tyranny  of  such  a  faith,  we 
must  all  say  it  in  sheer  resistance  to  despair. 
Faith  in  such  a  government  of  the  world,  admin- 
istered by  an  almighty  Being,  would  be  enough  to 
make  it  a  world  of  maniacs.  No  man  ever  real- 
ized its  existence,  and  lived.  John  Foster,  by  a 
false  theology  at  this  point,  was  driven  to  falsify 
his  faith  at  other  points.  As  the  bulging  of  an 
elastic  ball  at  one  spot  compels  compensatory  in- 
dentation at  another,  so  in  the  structure  of  a  man's 
moral  beliefs,  excess  here  necessitates  deficiency 
there.  Fatality  in  guilt  compels  the  denial  of 
retribution. 

Our  popular  theology  to-day  is  suffering  im- 
mensely, yet  to  the  believers  unconsciously,  from 
the  causes  here  indicated.  Men  are  making  light 
of  sin  because  they  more  than  half  believe  that 
they  can  not  help  it.    They  are  "  unlucky  rascals," 


94  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

and  their  ill-luck  has  to  bear  the  brunt  of  the  ras- 
cality. Men  who  are  standing  on  the  confines  of 
the  world  of  woe,  and  are  slowly  ripening  for  its 
demonized  society,  are  thinking  very  well  of  them- 
selves because  false  teaching,  seconded  by  self-pity, 
has  persuaded  them  that  they  are  doing  about  as 
well  as  they  can  do.  Man  is  frail ;  it  is  human  to 
err ;  who  is  he  that  sinneth  not  ?  Men  are  more 
sinned  against  than  sinning ;  sin  is  the  heritage  of 
an  unbalanced  brain ;  the  fathers  have  eaten  sour 
grapes,  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge ; 
certainty  is  the  equivalent  of  necessity ;  who  ever 
acted  the  contrary?  Thus  men  reason  when  hard 
pressed  by  an  accusing  conscience.  In  certain 
moral  exigencies  we  are  all  Mohammedans.  "  It 
is  kismet — what  can  we  do  ?  "  Even  our  charity  in 
judgment  of  others,  we  turn  into  self-justification 
in  judging  ourselves. 

Accordingly,  penal  justice,  when  we  face  it  as 
a  sure  reality,  loses  its  divine  radiance ;  and  we 
think  of  it,  not  as  justice  inflicted  on  the  guilty, 
but  as  misfortune  heaped  upon  the  weak.  Half 
the  human  race,  more  or  less,  must  have  another 
probation  because  they  are  so  unlucky  in  this. 
Another  world  must  give  compensation  for  their 
faring  so  hardly  here.  To  our  distempered  vision, 
eternal  pains  inflicted  upon  such  "  miserable  sin- 
ners "  would  be  eternal  despotism.  Shall  not  the 
Judge  of  all  the  earth  do  right? 

There  is  a  vast  amount  of  this  sophisticated  rea- 
soning grumbling  in  the  popular  theology  against 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retribution.  95 

the  faith  of  oiir  fathers.  Good  and  able  men,  too, 
are  drifting  into  sympathy  with  these  vagaries 
through  the  force  of  amiable  sensibilities.  They 
are  duped  by  a  craving  for  an  -^olian  theology. 
They  are  unconscious  of  the  fatal  hurt  they  are 
doing  to  minds  less  intelligent,  and  consciences 
less  pure,  than  theirs. 

As  a  partial  corrective  of  all  this,  we  need  to 
tone  up  our  faith  in  the  absolute  sovereignty  of 
the  human  will.  Never  under  any  conceivable 
conditions  is  sin  a  misfortune  only :  the  instant 
that  it  becomes  that,  it  is  no  more  sin.  A  just 
God  never  damned  a  soul  for  moral  disease,  and 
never  will.  He  will  as  soon  send  a  man  to  hell  for 
a  dislocated  hip  or  an  infirm  memory.  AVill  in  man, 
within  the  range  ordained  for  its  free  action,  is  as 
autocratic  as  will  in  God.  To  a  being  with  such 
a  lordly  endowment,  probationary  existence  any- 
where, so  far  as  we  know,  is  a  fair  trial.  Around 
the  universe  he  would  carrj^  his  destiny  with  him. 
He  has  that  in  his  possession  wdiich  no  power  but 
his  own  can  crush.  Every  human  soul  is  a  moral 
Gibraltar :  its  conquest  is  impossible  but  from 
within.  God  never  touches  it,  or  permits  tempta- 
tion to  touch  it,  in  such  manner  as  to  paralyze  its 
supremacy.  "  God  will  not  suffer  you  to  be 
tempted  above  that  ye  are  able."  When  Satan 
was  permitted  to  try  the  moral  temper  of  Job,  the 
Lord  said,  "He  is  in  thine  hand,  but  save  his 
life."  So  in  every  instance  of  temptation,  there 
is   one   thing   which   God   holds   in    impregnable 


96  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

reserve.  Next  to  His  own  sovereignty,  He  prizes 
that  of  every  being  made  in  His  own  image.  From 
the  archangel  to  a  new-born  infant,  He  guards  that 
jewel  as  the  apple  of  his  eye.  If  wrong  were  done 
to  its  integrity,  the  universe  would  be  shattered 
into  chaos. 

Guilt,  therefore,  is  guilt.  It  is  not  misfortune  ; 
it  is  not  ill-luck ;  it  is  not  imbecility ;  it  is  not  dis- 
ease ;  it  is  not  want  of  moral  balance ;  it  is  not 
inherited  depravity  ;  it  is  not  fate  ;  it  is  guilt  pure 
and  simple.  Any  trial  consistent  with  a  man's 
moral  freedom,  so  far  as  we  know,  is  a  fair  trial. 
If  a  man  has  more  than  that,  he  has  more  than 
justice :  it  is  grace.  Up  to  the  full  extent  of 
conscious  wrong,  a  man  is  damnable.  Fate  is  for 
idiots.  The  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die.  This 
is  justice.  It  is  not  justice  with  a  reservation :  it 
Injustice  full  and  absolute.  Being  just,  it  is  glori- 
ous and  divine :  it  partakes  of  God's  infinite  ma- 
jesty. It  is  one  of  those  ultimate  ideas,  beyond  or 
above  which  human  thought  can  conceive  of  noth- 
ing more  pure  or  more  sublime.  Yet  this  is  the 
retributive  element  in  God's  government.  If  it  is 
not  right,  nothing  is  right.  If  it  is  not  a  fit  theme 
of  exulting  song,  the  universe  does  not  contain 
such  in  all  its  history. 


IX. 

CORRECTIVES  OF  THE  POPULAR  FAITH  IN 
RETRIBUTION. 

PART   II. 

It  was  observed  in  the  preceding  essay,  that  we 
need  rectified  conceptions  of  tlie  sovereignty  of 
the  human  will  to  create  an  adequate  idea  of 
the  malign  nature  of  sin.  Whoever  originated  the 
saying,  ''  It  was  worse  than  a  crime :  it  was  a 
blunder,"  betrayed  the  atomic  notion  of  sin,  which, 
for  the  most  part,  rules  the  popular  morals.  As  if 
any  thing  could  be  worse  than  a  crime  except  a 
blacker  crime  !  It  was  a  pagan  thought.  Under 
its  illusions,  men  find  food  for  comedy  in  sin's  va- 
garies. Profane  men  coin  sneers  and  jokes  out  of 
the  words  which  express  it  and  its  doom.  Why  is 
it,  that,  in  certain  strata  of  society,  force  of  utter- 
ance is  appreciated  in  no  other  forms  ?  Why  is  it, 
that,  on  the  platform,  nothing  else  is  so  sure  to 
command  the  applause  of  a  popular  audience  as 
an  oath?  The  more  irreverent  it  is,  the  more 
delectable. 

This  is  sometimes  illustrated  where  we  least 
expect  it.     On  one  occasion,  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 

97 


98  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

son  was  lecturing  in  Boston ;  and  for  a  half-liour 
they  found  nothing  in  his  refined  speculations  to 
respond  to  with  those  signs  of  approval  which  a 
popular  assembly  loves  so  well.  At  length  he 
exploded  one  of  his  inimitable  antitheses,  of  which 
the  latter  clause  was,  "Damn  George  Washington." 
That  his  audience  understood,  and  they  gave  hiin 
their  applause.  It  was  not  the  name,  it  was  not 
any  very  definite  notion  of  the  thing,  it  was  noth- 
ing but  the  word  which  tickled  their  frivolous 
irreverence.  If  he  had  said,  "Damn  the  North 
Pole,"  the  effect  would  have  been  the  same ;  and 
if  he  had  quoted  the  favorite  anathema  of  sailors, 
it  would  probably  have  been  doubled. 

Indeed,  the  popular  sentiment  goes  to  a  greater 
extreme.  There  is  a  prepossession  for  wickedness 
in  the  world  which  makes  it  an  essential  element 
of  a  manly  character.  Alfieri  said,  "  The  crimes 
of  Italy  are  proof  of  the  superiority  of  the  stock." 
We  find  a  similar  idea  in  Shakspeare :  — 

"  Best  men  are  molded  out  of  faults, 
And  for  the  most  become  the  better 
For  being  a  little  bad." 

The  collateral  evidences  of  human  depravity  are 
nowhere  more  glaring  than  in  the  arts  of  self- 
delusion  by  which  we  cover  up  from  the  vision 
of  our  oAvn  consciences  the  blackness  of  darkness 
and  the  weird,  chaotic  damnation  involved  in  the 
very  nature  of  this  colossal  evil  which  we  call  sin. 
Common  life  is   yet  immensely  below  the   level 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retrihution,  99 

of  Scriptural  thought  m  its  average  conceptions  of 
this  thing. 

Yet  it   deserves   remark,  that  literature   often 
gives  the  lie  to  this  popular '  delusion.     What  is 
the  literary  idea  of  sin  as  represented  in  the  best 
works  of  human   genius?     When   genius   would 
portray  in  fiction  the  interior  working  of  a  great 
crime  in  a  human  soul,  it  falls  back  approximately 
upon  the  biblical  idea.     It  reproduces  some  resem- 
blance to  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul.     Witness  the 
whole  history  of  tragedy  from  Sophocles  to  Shak- 
speare.     Shakspeare's   Lady  Macbeth  suffers   the 
biblical  "wrath  of  God."     In  the  modern  romance, 
so  far  as  imagination  is  successful  in  awakening  the 
response  of  the  human  heart  to  its  descriptions  of 
crime,  it  works  in  the  line   of  inspired  thought. 
Genius  paints  guilt  as  carrying  within  itself  the 
penal   fires  which   inspiration  represents   God  as 
inflicting.     In  one  respect,  indeed,  the  literary  idea 
surpasses  that  of  biblical  inspiration.     It  is  a  mer- 
ciless idea.     It  leaves  guilt  in  solitary  helplessness 
to   its   self-wrought    retributions.      It   knows   no 
such  thing  as  forgiveness;   finds  no  place  in  the 
system  for  atonement ;  discovers  no  remedial  or 
compensatory  expedients.     Once   guilty,  for  ever 
guilty,  and  for  ever  doomed  —  this  is  the  verdict 
of  the  literary  instinct  in  its  portraiture  of  guilt 
at  its  maturity.     Look  at  Hawthorne's  description 
of  its  working  in  the  "  Marble  Faun."     Nowhere 
in   the    Scriptures   do   you   find  a  conception   so 
merciless  and  maleficent. 


100  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

In  Hawthorne's  theology,  even  the  knowledge 
of  another's  crmie  miparts  to  an  innocent  looker- 
on  some  of  the  elements  of  inevitable  doom.  He 
says,  ''  Every  crime  destroys  more  Edens  than  its 
own.  While  there  is  a  single  guilty  being  in  the 
universe,  each  innocent  one  must  be  tortured  by 
that  guilt."  Again,  he  paints  "  the  chill  and  heavy 
misery  which  only  the  innocent  can  experience, 
though  it  possesses  many  of  the  characteristics 
that  mark  the  sense  of  guilt."  Again,  describing 
the  remorse  of  Hilda  for  the  crime  of  Miriam,  he 
tells  of  her  "  heart-sickness,  her  dismal  certainty 
of  the  existence  of  evil,  her  awful  loneliness  in 
her  secret  knowledge  of  the  crime."  "It  envel- 
oped her  whithersoever  she  went."  It  created  a 
''  chill  dungeon  which  kept  her  in  its  gray  twilight, 
and  fed  her  with  its  unwholesome  air,  fit  only  for 
a  criminal  to  breathe  and  pine  in.  She  could  not 
escape  it.  In  the  effort  to  do  so,  she  stumbled 
ever  and  again  over  this  deadly  idea  of  mortal 
guilt.     Poor  sufferer  for  another's  sin  !  " 

Such  is  guilt  as  genius  paints  it.  Such  are  its 
appalling  ravages  when  unrelieved  by  remedial 
devices.  Link,  now,  with  the  biblical  idea  of  retri- 
bution, Hawthorne's  idea  of  incorrigible  and  hope- 
less sin,  and  where  can  you  find  in  the  Scriptures 
any  symbol  of  an  eternal  hell  which  appears  unna- 
tural or  inhuman?  The  two  things  germinate  and 
grow  together,  like  to  like,  with  hideous  affinity. 
They  are  in  exact  keeping.  Each  necessitates  the 
other.     No   such  suffering  can  exist  without   its 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retrihution.        101 

antecedent  guilt :  no  such  guilt  can  exist  without 
its  compensatory  suffering.  This  is  the  working, 
not  alone  of  genius  rioting  in  a  fictitious  world :  it 
is  the  working  of  all  deep  and  intense  natures 
which  have  brought  a  Christian  conscience  to  bear 
upon  the  awful  problem  of  the  existence  of  evil. 
Human  nature  everywhere,  sitting  in  judgment 
upon  it,  pronounces  it  to  be  true. 

4.  Yet  another  corrective  which  the  popular 
notion  of  retribution  needs,  is  a  more  profound 
recognition  of  the  impracticable  nature  of  sin 
under  a  government  of  moral  freedom. 

In  a  moral  being,  the  range  of  sin  is  bounded 
only  by  the  range  of  faculty.  Whatever  he  can  be 
as  a  moral  being  in  point  of  magnitude  or  versatile 
capacity,  that  he  can  be  in  the  magnitude  and  ver- 
satility of  guilt.  All  there  is  of  him  is  free  to 
sin.  From  this,  it  follows  that  one  of  the  most 
profound  problems  of  moral  government,  perhaps 
to  Infinite  Wisdom  the  most  profound,  is,  ''What 
to  do  with  guilt?"  If  it  were  subject  to  govern- 
ment by  mechanical  forces,  the  problem  might  be 
soon  solved.  It  might  be  crushed  as  by  an  earth- 
quake, or  exploded  like  dynamite  ;  and,  fearful  as 
the  ruin  might  be,  that  might  be  the  end  of  it.  It 
might  go  into  history  as  a  past,  and  by  and  by  a 
forgotten,  catastrophe.  Human  government  might 
rid  itself  of  crime  by  the  extermination  of  crimi- 
nals the  world  over.  The  tramp  of  a  million 
armed  men  has  stamped  out  rebellion  in  a  prov- 
ince, and  it  has  been  heard  of  no  more.    Substitute 


102  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

the  scaffold  for  the  penitentiary,  and  the  peniten- 
tiaries might  be  vacant  in  a  month.  Human  rulers 
have  sometimes  approximated  the  policy  of  exter- 
mination in  the  sanguinary  severity  of  their  crimi- 
nal codes,  and  the  savagery  of  the  usages  of  war. 
But  the  moral  sense  of  the  world  has  protested; 
and  the  more  sensitive  it  has  become  to  the  sacred- 
ness  of  human  life,  the  more  intricate  has  the 
problem  grown,  "  What  shall  we  do  with  crime  ?  " 
Take  but  a  solitary  case.  Are  not  all  humane 
governments  at  their  wit's  end  in  devising  ade- 
quate restraints  of  the  crime  of  wife-beating?  It 
is  assuming,  in  our  days,  the  dignity  of  a  triumph- 
ant and  unmanageable  outrage  on  civilization, 
which  law  can  neither  prevent  nor  adequately 
punish.  What  is  the  meaning  of  the  blunt  pro- 
posal here  and  there,  to  restore  the  old  element  of 
torture  to  the  criminal  code  for  the  punishment 
of  this  crime  ?  The  nineteenth  century  looks 
back  helplessly  to  the  ninth.  Is  it  not  a  confession 
that  we  do  not  know  what  else  to  do  ?  Crime  is 
for  ever  taking  on  forms  which  balk  the  devices 
of  corrective  justice.  Our  boasted  advances  in 
science  and  invention  redouble  the  resources  of 
guilt  to  war  on  mankind.  "  Dynamite-fiends  "  set 
thrones  tottering,  and  nations  trembling ;  and  they 
laugh  at  law  when  it  w^ould  lay  hands  upon  them. 
There  seems  to  be  no  end  to  this  conflict  of  sin 
with  social  order.  Humanity  goes  down  in  the 
struggle.  Human  nature  cries  out  for  vengeance, 
and  wise  men  are  dumb. 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retribution.        103 

The  perplexity  is  not  restricted  to  the  control 
of  gross  and  brutal  crimes.  It  runs  a  tangled 
thread  through  the  unwritten  laws  and  amenities 
of  social  life.  Why  is  it  that  a  subtile  law  of  eti- 
quette commands  su^^pression  of  conversation  on 
personal  religion  unless  some  hint  has  been  given 
that  it  will  not  be  unwelcome?  It  is  because 
religious  thought,  the  instant  that  it  assumes  a 
personal  bearing,  runs  against  a  universal  con- 
sciousness of  wrong.  Personal  religion  in  every 
mind  starts  with  the  idea  of  sin.  Therefore  it 
disturbs  equipoise  of  feeling.  Generally  it  is  un- 
welcome. It  is  the  key  to  a  dark  and  secret  history. 
Men  are  shy  of  it.  They  do  not  know  what  to 
do  with  it.  Guilt  is  coiled  up  beliind  it ;  and  men 
do  not  know  what  to  say  of  that,  or  what  to  do 
with  it.  Everywhere  present  in  the  lair  of  human 
consciousness  is  this  untamed  sense  of  wrong. 
Our  human  instinct  is  to  bury  it  in  silence,  and  we 
shut  the  mouths  of  others  by  not  opening  our  own. 
We  feel  it  only  to  fear  it,  and  to  suffer.  Therefore 
we  weave  over  and  around  it  the  peremptory  ban 
of  social  etiquette,  to  bind  it,  and  thrust  it  out  of 
speech.     What  else  can  we  do  with  it  ? 

Still  more  complicated  and  unmanageable  does 
the  problem  become  when  guilt  threatens  the 
very  being  of  society.  In  the  world  as  it  is,  guilt 
and  brute  force  are  in  the  ascendant;  and  they 
concentrate  and  fortify  themselves  against  law. 
"  Dangerous  classes "  threaten  all  that  makes  life 
desirable.      The   chief  question   of  law   is.  How 


104  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

shall  wrong  be  kept  under,  and  within  the  bounds 
necessary  to  social  well-being  ?  Everywhere  it  is 
a  disturbing  force.  Men  find  no  place  for  it  in 
the  constitution  of  things.  It  is  war  against 
nature.  All  that  we  can  do  with  it,  is  to  shut  it 
out  of  sight,  behind  bolts  and  bars,  in  places  of 
its  own,  and  leave  it  there. 

Yes,  after  ages  of  study  and  experiment  in  crim- 
inal jurisprudence,  human  law  has  not  advanced 
in  its  treatment  of  incorrigible  sin  beyond  the 
dungeon  and  the  scaffold.  We  are  all  born  to 
the  sight  of  jails  and  state  prisons.  We  sleep  in 
peace,  only  because  we  know  that  "  dangerous 
classes  "  are  locked  up  there  behind  armed  senti- 
nels. If  mobs  set  them  loose,  we  tremble  in  our 
beds  from  nightfall  till  the  morning.  If  prisons 
fail  us,  we  take  to  revolvers ;  and  with  those  the 
desperado  is  our  superior.  What  shall  we  do? 
So  obdurate  and  impracticable  a  thing  is  guilt  as 
an  element  in  the  social  organism !  Time  works 
no  change :  law  grows  no  wiser.  The  government 
of  incorrigible  guilt  has  evolved  the  policy  of 
retributive  penalties,  and  there  it  stops.  Neither 
justice  nor  benevolence  can  take  a  step  beyond. 
In  this  respect.  Law  stands  where  it  did  when  it 
laid  the  iron  hand  on  the  brow  of  the  first  murderer. 

Now,  the  conditions  of  the  problem  are  not 
essentially  different  under  the  government  of  God. 
Incorrigible  guilt  there,  moral  freedom  remaining 
intact,  is  the  same  impracticable  thing  as  else- 
where.    What  shall  a  righteous  sovereign  do  with 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retrihution.        105 

it  ?  What  can  He  do  ?  Exterminate  it  by  sheer 
omnipotence  H?  can  not.  The  million  armed  men 
might  devastate  a  continent,  and  yet  not  stamp 
out  one  guilty  thought.  Sin,  under  the  law  of 
moral  freedom,  bears  no  relation  to  physical  force. 
It  is  no  irreverence  to  say  that  God  can  not  put  an 
end  to  it  by  sheer  power.  Can  He  make  yesterday 
to-day?  For  the  same  reason,  and  in  the  same 
sense,  He  can  not  stop  the  ravages  of  sin  by 
mechanical  devices.  He  can  not  bury  it  by  earth- 
quakes, nor  crush  it  by  cyclones. 

Hence  it  is,  that  God  can  not  save  a  sinner  if 
the  sinner  will  not  be  saved.  What  shall  He  do  ? 
Shall  He  forgive  ?  But,  the  guilty  remaining  un- 
repentant, that  would  be  a  farce.  An  unholy 
universe  would  laugh  at  universal  amnesty,  and 
the  moral  sense  of  holy  beings  would  resent  it  as 
an  outrage  upon  law  and  grace.  It  could  not  add 
an  iota  to  the  happiness  of  any  being,  or  relieve 
one  pang  of  suffering.  The  great  problem  would 
remain  unsolved,  "  What  to  do  with  guilt  ?  " 

Under  moral  government,  if  guilt  can  not  be 
quelled  by  means  of  moral  suasion  or  its  equiv- 
alents, nothing  can  reach  it  but  retribution. 
Man's  own  will  has  the  decision  within  itself:  if 
he  will  not  be  saved,  he  can  not  be.  Nothing  is 
left  but  retributive  devices  for  the  protection  of 
the  innocent.  And  of  these,  the  first  and  chief  is 
to  leave  guilt  to  itself.  Give  it  a  place  where  it 
can  be  let  alone  to  act  out  its  own  wretched  na- 
ture.    As  human  law  has  shut  u^Don  it  the  doors 


106  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

of  the  penitentiary  and  the  dungeon,  so  divine 
law  has  devised  a  place  where  guilt  matured  and 
incorrigible  shall  be  shut  in  to  its  own  malign  sol- 
itude, and  left  there.  But  guilt  thus  left  and 
turned  back  upon  itself  is  hell.  Call  it  what  we 
may,  disguise  it  as  we  please,  it  is  the  "second 
death."  It  is  the  world  of  weeping  and  wailing 
and  gnashing  of  teeth.  What  else  can  it  be? 
Who  is  to  blame  for  it?  Would  God  be  worthy 
of  trust  if  He  did  otherwise  ? 

Let  the  last  inquiry  be  answered  by  another. 
When  Chief  Justice  Shaw,  with  tremulous  voice 
and  streaming  eyes,  pronounced  sentence  of  death 
upon  his  friend.  Professor  Webster,  for  the  murder 
of  Dr.  Parkman,  did  he  do  right,  or  wrong  ?  Did 
the  deed  deserve  the  reverence,  or  the  execration, 
of  mankind  ?  One  or  the  other  it  did  deserve,  — 
which?  That  was  an  act  of  retributive  justice. 
Either  it  was  a  deed  of  high  and  noble  virtue,  or 
it  was  murder.  Which  was  it?  So  when  God 
pronounces  the  sentence  of  eternal  death  upon 
eternal  guilt.  He  does  the  thing  that  is  right,  and 
the  only  thing.  It  is  just ;  being  just,  it  is  worthy 
of  God ;  being  godlike,  it  is  intrinsically  excellent 
and  amiable.  It  deserves,  as  it  receives,  the  exult- 
ing approval  of  all  holy  minds.  He  does  all  that 
He  can  do  with  such  obdurate  infatuation  under 
the  conditions  of  moral  freedom. 

It  is  futile  to  say  that  God's  government  is  un- 
like man's.  As  it  respects  the  principle  in  hand, 
it  is  not  unlike  man's.     Both  are  founded  on  im- 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Retribution.        107 

mutable  right.  The  retributive  element  is  the 
same  in  both.  The  only  difference  is,  that  in  the 
divine  administration  retributive  judgments  are 
infinitely  more  equitable,  retributive  sanctions 
infinitely  more  imperative,  and  the  execution  of 
retributive  decree  is  infinitely  more  exact  in  its 
adjustment  to  ill-desert.  In  the  mind  of  God,  be 
it  repeated,  pure  justice  is  pure  benevolence.-  We 
can  not  be  in  sympathy  with  God  until  we  acknowl- 
edge this,  and  recognize  His  retributive  inflictions 
with  the  same  grateful  reverence  with  which  we 
adore  His  redeeming  love. 

Moreover,  it  is  due  to  the  completeness  of  faith 
in  this  matter,  that  we  recognize  the  personal 
agency  of  God  in  His  retributive  administration. 
It  is  true  that  penal  justice  comes  about  through 
the  operation  of  general  laws.  The  moral  consti- 
tution of  things  provides  for  and  necessitates  it. 
The  make  of  the  human  mind  causes  a  transgressor 
to  become  at  the  maturity  of  his  guilt  his  own 
executioner.  He  is  self-tried,  self-convicted,  self- 
condemned,  and  self-damned.  But  in  the  whole 
process,  from  beginning  to  end,  God  executes  His 
own  decrees.  He  never  abrogates  His  prerogative 
as  the  supreme  Judge  of  sin.  Whatever  suffering 
sin  creates.  He  inflicts.  The  same  retributive  sen- 
timent which  we  find  in  ourselves  approving  and 
demanding  the  punishment  of  guilt,  exists  in  the 
mind  of  God,  and  there  approves  and  demands  the 
same.  Here  as  elsewhere  God  acts  through  laws ; 
but  they  are  laws  of  His  own  creation,  and  they 


108  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

express  the  decree  of  His  own  will.  We  yield  to 
a  moral  weakness  which  dishonors  God,  if  we  con- 
ceal from  our  own  minds  the  retributive  person- 
ality of  God  under  cover  of  eternal  laws.  It  is 
the  same  error  which  agnosticism  commits  when  it 
hides  the  divine  Person  behind  pantheistic  devices. 
God,  the  supreme  and  living  One,  acts  in  the  fiery 
judgments  and  remorseful  inflictions  of  conscience, 
and  in  all  the  ramifications  of  moral  government 
by  which  guilt  is  made  to  work  out  its  own  damna- 
tion. The  popular  theology  in  this  respect  needs 
reconstruction.  The  pulpit  in  this  matter  has  a 
mission  to  this  generation  which  it  can  not  ignore 
without  shame. 

The  views  here  jDresented  have  a  significant  bear- 
ing on  one  form  of  objection  to  the  doctrine  of 
retribution  which  is,  for  the  most  part,  passed  over 
in  silence  by  the  pulpit.  The  objection  assumes  a 
personal  character.  We  are  told  that  a  humane, 
and  especially  a  cultured,  mind  can  not  believe  the 
doctrine.  It  is  too  abhorrent  to  benign  sensibili- 
ties. Our  inmost  souls  are  shocked  and  racked  by 
the  conce]Dtion.  Preachers  are  charged  with  an 
induration  of  humane  sensibilities  in  proclaiming 
it.  We  are  told  that  our  souls  are  flint.  We  are 
even  believed  to  be  guilty  of  some  intellectual 
legerdemain  by  which  we  preach  what  we  do 
not  at  heart  believe.  We  do  not  because  we  can 
not.  We  preach  under  stress  of  professional 
necessity. 

An  English  critic  gives  expression  to  this  charge 


The  Popular  Faith  in  Metrihution.        109 

in  a  review  of  the  preaching  of  President  Edwards 
in  this  style  :  "  He  disrobed  himself  of  human  sym- 
pathies. He  resolved  himself  absolutely  into  a 
thinking  apparatus.  He  deliberately  looks  into 
Hell,  and  the  whole  heat  of  its  burnings  can  not 
melt  into  a  tear  the  ice  in  his  eye.  He  gazes  on 
the  greater  portion  of  his  brother-men  stretched 
to  eternity  upon  a  wheel,  and  his  eyelid  quivers 
no  more  than  if  he  saw  a  butterfly." 

To  us  who  know  the  traditions  of  the  gentle 
and  quick  sensibilities,  even  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment, of  President  Edwards,  this  passes  by  as  the 
idle  wind.  Whatever  else  the  illustrious  author 
of  the  "  Essay  on  the  Will "  may  have  been,  he 
was  not  made  of  cast-iron.  But  the  popular  notion 
of  him  contains  a  notion  of  our  faith  in  retribution 
which  deserves  an  answer.  And  our  answer  is, 
that  be  it  true,  or  not  true,  the  biblical  reception 
of  God's  retributive  inflictions  by  holy  minds 
exceeds  it  in  apparent  vindictiveness.  The  heav- 
enly temperament  is  more  apathetic  than  ours. 
Are  believers  here  malevolent?  Then  believers 
there  are  immensely  more  so.  The  redeemed  mind 
not  only  does  not  quail  before  retributive  disclo- 
sures, but  exalts  and  magnifies  them.  The  public 
sentiment  of  the  holy  universe  indorses  them  with 
rejoicings  as  a  sublime  and  benignant  revelation 
of  God.  The  distress  which  we  feel  in  view  of 
the  appalling  reality  is  silently  rebuked  by  its  con- 
trast with  inspired  and  heavenly  experiences. 

Which,  then,  is   true?     Which  compasses  the 


110  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

ultimate  discoveries  of  eternity,  when  our  minds 
shall  have  grown  old  in  study  of  the  deep  things 
of  God,  —  our  enervated,  tremulous,  paralytic 
faith,  or  the  robust  and  exulting  vision  of  St. 
John? 


X. 

RETRIBUTION  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  REASON. 

PART   I. 

The  foregoing  discussions  on  the  subject  of 
Eetribution  have  given  rise  to  a  considerable  cor- 
respondence. One  letter  from  a  stranger  to  me, 
an  intelligent  and  earnest  unbeliever  in  the  doc- 
trine of  endless  punishment,  has  called  forth  this 
reply.  I  am  not  at  liberty  to  publish  the  letter  of 
my  correspondent ;  but  the  answer  is  given  here, 
though  greatly  enlarged,  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
suggest  to  other  minds  one  way  of  putting  the 
doctrine  which  is  not  open  to  the  objections  which 
are  urged  against  it  in  other  forms. 

Bear  Sir,  —  I  thank  you  for  the  frankness  and 
courtesy  of  your  letter.  I  recognize  in  it  the 
thought  of  an  earnest  mind  with  wdiich  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  confer,  whether  we  can  agree,  or  not, 
in  our  ultimate  beliefs.  The  most  that  I  can  hope 
to  do  in  manuscript  reply,  is  possibly  to  put  the 
doctrine  of  retribution  into  a  different  form  from 
that  in  which  you  have  been  accustomed  to  con- 
ceive of  it,  and  to  deny  it.     It  is  a  subject  on 

111 


112  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

which  the  vital  question  turns  on  the  way  we  put 
things.  If  I  succeed  in  making  it  clear  that  there 
is  a  way  of  putting  it  in  which  it  is  not  open  to 
the  odium  with  which  you  now  associate  it,  you 
will  not  think  your  time  lost  in  reflecting  upon 
the  following  suggestions  ;  viz.,  — 

1.  The  doctrine  as  I  would  state  it  in  its  sim- 
plest form  is  this :  That  endless  sin  must  be  pun- 
ished with  endless  misery.  It  is  not  that  the  sin 
of  an  hour  or  of  one  lifetime  will  be  visited  with 
eternal  pains,  except  as  it  involves  the  sequence 
of  eternal  sin.  God,  in  the  administration  of  His 
government,  adjusts  results  to  actual  conditions, 
not  to  conditions  only  possible  or  conceivable. 
He  adjusts  punishment  to  character  as  it  is  in  the 
concrete,  not  to  sin  in  the  abstract.  It  is  in  one 
sense  true,  therefore,  that  man  is  punished  for  ever 
for  the  sins  of  this  life,  but  only  as  the  sins  of 
this  life  create  a  character  which  will  perpetuate 
sin  for  ever.  We  involve  ourselves  in  hopeless 
confusion  if  we  attempt  to  frame  a  conception  of 
the  divine  government  in  the  abstract,  as  related 
to  character  in  the  abstract.  God  deals  with 
things  as  they  are.  He  deals  with  a  sinful  char- 
acter as  a  whole.  Time  and  eternity  are  not  sepa- 
rated in  His  decrees,  and  the  one  set  over  as  a 
balance  to  the  other.  Both  form  one  destiny. 
Sin  is  punished  for  what  it  is,  and  so  long  as  it  is. 
This  is  just.  Both  reason  and  revelation  teach, 
that,  so  long  as  a  man  sins,  so  long  he  must  suffer ; 
and  this  is  the  doctrine  of  endless  punishment. 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason,        113 

Unending  sin  will  involve  unending  suffering. 
Revelation  teaches  that  some  men  ivill  sin  for  ever ; 
therefore  they  must  suffer  for  ever. 

This  to  reason  seems  intrinsically  right.  Does 
it  not?  No  moral  instincts  which  are  loyal  to 
God  revolt  from  it  as  an  outrage.  Why  should 
they?  More  than  this,  endless  pain  to  endless 
sin  is  inevitable  in  the  nature  of  things.  Sin  and 
suffering  are  indissoluble  evils.  Where  the  one  is, 
there  the  other  must  be.  What  the  one  is,  that 
the  other  must  be  in  intensity.  As  well  think  to 
separate  pain  from  a  lacerated  nerve  as  from  an 
outraged  conscience.  As  well  expect  to  pierce 
your  eyeball  with  a  lancet  painlessly  as  to  save 
from  misery  a  moral  being  whose  nature  is  once 
gangrened  through  and  through  with  a  sense  of 
guilt.  A  guilty  being  has  only  to  discover  him- 
self as  he  is,  to  be  overwhelmed  with  suffering  for 
ever.  That  discovery  is  inevitable  in  eternity. 
There  are  no  shams  in  a  spiritual  world. 

2.  Sin  is  entirely  a  voluntary  wrong.  Here  and 
everywhere,  in  its  initial  stages  and  in  its  maturity, 
it  is  the  work  of  the  sinner's  own  will.  So  far  as 
it  is  not  that,  it  is  not  sin.  Temptation  is  not  sin. 
Inherited  bias  to  evil  is  not  sin.  God  will  not 
punish  it  any  more  than  other  misfortune.  Man 
never  inherits  guilt.  Man  or  demon  in  sin  is  there 
because  he  chooses  to  be  there.  In  Hell  as  on 
earth,  man  will  be  a  sinner  because  he  will  choose 
to  be  such.  Sin  is  never  inflicted  as  the  punish- 
ment of  sin.     Devils  are  not  in  sin  as  a  doom. 


114  My  Study:  and  Other  Ensays. 

Tliey  do  not  suffer  it :  they  create  it.  It  has  not 
come  upon  them  unawares  :  they  have  willed  it  so. 
This  is  an  elemental  truth,  which,  because  we  can 
pack  it  in  a  nutshell,  we  do  not  appreciate.  It 
covers  the  moral  universe  with  its  corollaries. 
More  than  half  of  the  mystery  of  evil  is  solved 
by  it. 

3.  Sin  is  of  such  a  nature  as  to  perpetuate  itself. 
This  is  the  law  of  all  character.  If  left  to  itself, 
with  no  remedial  influence  from  without,  sin  never 
dwindles  into  nothing.  Crimes  never  shrink  into 
foibles ;  passions  never  subside  into  subacute 
eccentricities ;  vice  never  shrinks  into  infirmity. 
Once  guilty,  always  guilty,  is  the  law  of  all  de- 
pravity, no  external  power  intervening.  Virtue 
is  under  the  same  law.  It  is  the  normal  condition 
of  character  as  such.  Where  the  tree  falls,  there 
it  shall  lie,  —  not  by  fatality,  but  by  the  self-perpet- 
uating force  of  moral  choice.  Hence  the  intrinsic 
and  appalling  evil  of  sin.  Hence  the  necessity 
of  subjecting  it  to  imperative  control  in  a  moral 
universe. 

4.  Sin  everywhere  is  under  a  law  of  growth. 
All  character  is  under  the  same  law.  Guilt,  there- 
fore, becomes  more  obdurate  and  intense  with 
time.  It  is  so  here :  we  have  reason  to  believe 
that  it  will  be  so  in  eternity.  In  a  spiritual  state 
of  being,  the  self-delusions  and  disguises  of  sin  are 
removed :  then  sin,  by  its  innate  law  of  growth, 
mounts  up  into  matured,  finished  character.  Im- 
pulsive sin  settles  into  a  consolidated  principle  of 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason.       115 

evil.  Guilty  desire  swells  into  guilty  passion. 
Evil  slumbering  below  the  depths  of  consciousness, 
is  roused  into  sleepless  vigilance.  Sin  thus  ma- 
tured is  pure  malignity.  It  is  character  demon- 
ized.  Hatred  of  God  and  of  all  good,  is  sin  at  its 
climax  of  evolution.  We  find  only  approaches  to 
it  here,  but  they  are  enough  to  disclose  what  sin 
must  be  when  it  is  left  to  itself  to  act  itself  out 
without  concealment  or  restraint.  It  is  the  most 
appalling  factor  in  the  destiny  of  a  moral  being. 

5.  The  misery  consequent  upon  sin,  which  com- 
mon speech  calls  its  punishment,  is  chiefly  spirit- 
ual in  its  nature.  We  do  see,  indeed,  that  in  tliis 
world  sin  creates  bodily  disorder,  and  therefore 
bodily  pain.  Guilt  builds  up  a  physical  tyranny. 
Some  crimes  have  a  fruitage  in  characteristic 
diseases,  which  follow  from  no  other  cause.  The 
bloated,  discolored,  mutilated  body  proclaims  its 
bondage  to  an  evil  spirit.  A  similar  law  may  hold 
sway  over  the  spiritual  body.  The  analogy  of 
nature  seems  to  suggest  that.  But  the  Scriptures 
do  not  affirm  it ;  and  I  prefer,  therefore,  to  say  that 
the  punishment  of  sin  is  chiefly  spiritual.  As  the 
cause  is  of  the  spirit,  so  is  its  penal  consequence, 
the  body  being  but  an  incident  to  both.  It  is  the 
misery  of  conscious  guilt,  of  guilt  passionate  and 
obdurate,  of  guilt  concentrated  and  malign,  of 
guilt  accumulating  and  without  end ;  of  moral 
disorder  through  and  through ;  of  conscious  an- 
tagonism to  God  and  to  all  good ;  of  the  recij^ro- 
cal  antagonism  of  God,  to  whom  guilt  is  abhorrent ; 


116  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

of  the  chronic  warfare  which  this  mutual  hostility 
between  God  and  the  guilty  engenders ;  of  the 
self-contempt  and  self-loathing  inseparable  from 
the  extreme  of  full-grown  depravity ;  and  of  the 
intolerable  moral  solitude  in  which  no  second 
party  can  share  either  guilt  or  doom ;  —  the  misery 
of  this  conscious  experience,  making  up  the  whole 
being  of  the  man,  without  alleviation  by  one  right 
emotion  or  holy  purpose  or  godlike  thought,  —  this 
is  the  punishment  of  sin.  This  is  the  endless 
curse. 

In  your  letter,  you  put  the  case  as  that  of  a 
tender  and  guileless  maiden  in  her  "  teens,"  guilty 
of  foibles  only,  yet  not  a  saint,  and  therefore 
"roasting"  over  slow  and  dancing  flames,  while 
God  looks  on  as  at  an  entertainment.  I  put  it  as 
the  case  of  a  demonized  being,  like  Nero  or  the 
Borgias,  or  like  Mrs.  Stowe's  "  Legare  "  in  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,"  grown  up  to  the  point  of  supreme 
depravity,  suffering  the  rage  of  his  own  guilty 
passions,  torturing  himself  by  his  own  choice  of 
evil  as  his  supreme  good,  malign  in  his  emotions, 
an  enemy  of  God,  while  God  has  done  all  that 
infinite  wisdom  can  do  to  save  him.  Is  there  no 
difference  between  the  two  pictures?  Is  there 
no  distinction  between  a  doom  to  evil  under 
almighty  tyranny,  and  the  voluntary  choice  of 
moral  suicide?  Are  both  equally  open  to  the 
odium  of  revolting  and  incredible  dogmas? 

6.  Now  combine  all  the  facts  thus  far  named  in 
one,  and  we  have  this  resultant:    That  a  sinner, 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason.        Xll 

incorrigible  in  guilt,  matured  in  depraved  tastes, 
at  the  climax  of  ripened  evil,  malignant  through 
all  the  ramifications  of  his  being,  enamored  of  evil 
as  his  supreme  desire,  makes  his  own  hell.  Nothing 
conceivable  as  within  God's  power  to  inflict,  or 
man's  imagination  to  conceive,  can  form  a  destiny 
of  more  fearful  woe.  No  damnation  can  surpass 
that  which  a  malign  being  inflicts  upon  himself. 
Milton's  Satan  has  the  gist  of  the  whole  doctrine, 
—  "  Myself  am  Hell."  The  literature  of  tragedy 
in  its  picturing  of  remorse  abounds  with  the  same 
conception.  And  this  a  guilty  being  at  the  summit 
of  matured  character  chooses  as  his  own.  He  has 
created  and  nurtured  his  own  demonized  passions. 
He  chooses  and  seeks  his  demonized  associates. 
He  elects  as  his  abode  the  place  allotted  to  a 
demonized  society. 

Swedenborg  had  one  revelation  which  is  true 
to  nature,  though  one  may  not  believe  it  the  more 
for  his  saying  it.  He  declares  that  angels  taught 
him  that  "  God  never  thrusts  a  man  into  Hell :  he 
thrusts  himself  in."  He  says  elsewhere,  speaking 
of  spirits  who  had  lived  wickedly  here,  yet  were 
taken  temporarily  into  heaven,  that  "They  gasp 
there,  as  for  breath,  and  writhe  about  like  fishes 
out  of  the  water  in  the  atmosphere,  and  like  ani- 
mals in  the  receiver  of  an  air-pump,  the  air  being 
exhausted." 

This  accords  with  all  that  we  know  of  the  nature 
of  moral  being.  In  a  spiritual  world,  state  must 
be  as  character.     The  being  chooses  that  it  should 


118  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

be  so.  Place  and  character  at  enmity  engender 
acutest  misery.  Lost  man,  therefore,  goes  to  Hell 
of  his  own  accord.  His  whole  moral  nature  gravi- 
tates thither.  Like  seeks  its  like.  Set  a  lost  man 
adrift  in  the  universe,  with  a  free  pass  to  go  where 
he  will,  and  he  will  seek  society  of  his  own  rank. 
Guilt  will  define  the  frightful  caste  to  which  he 
will  of  choice  ally  himself.  Heaven,  were  its 
doors  wide  open  to  him,  would  be  a  hell  of  pro- 
founder  misery  to  him  than  the  abode  of  despair. 
Any  thing  is  a  less  evil,  in  his  estimate,  than  exist- 
ing consciously  in  the  presence  and  under  the  eye 
of  a  holy  God. 

You  remember,  doubtless,  the  story  told  of 
Lafayette  in  the  prison  at  Olmutz.  His  jailers 
received  orders  never  to  leave  him  one  moment 
out  of  sight.  Through  a  small  aperture  in  the 
door  of  his  dungeon,  a  human  eye  was  to  be 
always  upon  him.  He  said,  when  he  was  released, 
that  all  other  tortures  of  that  solitary  cell  were  as 
nothing  to  him,  in  comparison  with  the  unremit- 
ting consciousness  of  that  human  eye.  He  declared 
that  in  time  it  would  have  crazed  him.  So  I  con- 
ceive a  lost  man  in  eternity  would  flee,  were  it 
possible,  from  the  eye  of  God.  God's  j)i'esence 
makes  Heaven  a  hell  to  his  distorted  tastes.  You 
will  recall,  from  St.  John's  vision,  the  "  Kocks  and 
mountains,  fall  on  us !  "  Any  thing,  any  place,  any 
society,  any  solitude,  any  chaos,  is  welcome  in  the 
struggle  to  get  away  from  God !  This  is  sin  in  its 
innate  gravitation !  It  must  be  realized  in  the 
final  evolution  of  a  sinner's  destiny. 


Retribution  in  the  lAglit  of  Reason,        119 

This  process  of  moral  segregation  has  its  begin- 
ning in  this  world.  It  is  perceptible  in  the  volun- 
tary working  of  moral  affinities.  The  good  and 
the  evil  drift  asunder.  The  good  seek  the  society 
of  the  good,  and  the  evil  that  of  the  evil.  Elec- 
tive affinities  incline  each  one  to  his  moral  kindred. 
Like  goes  to  its  like.  The  cleavage  is  not  com- 
pulsory :  it  is  voluntary.  Its  lines  are  perceptible 
through  all  the  strata  of  society.  So,  in  the  rela- 
tion of  men  to  God,  the  wicked  do  not  cultivate 
communion  with  Him.  Wicked  men  are  commonly 
prayerless  men.  As  they  approach  the  maturity 
of  consolidated  character,  in  which  opinions  are 
fixed,  tastes  developed,  habits  confirmed,  they 
have  less  and  less  to  do  with  God  and  godly  men. 
One  such  honest  correspondent  of  mine  confesses, 
"  The  time  when  I  must  meet  God  is  unwelcome 
to  me.  I  do  not  think  of  it  twice  in  a  year.  I 
never  think  of  it  when  I  can  helj)  it."  This  process 
of  moral  alienation,  at  its  completion,  may  be  one 
phase  of  the  "  departure  "  which  God  decrees  at 
the  final  judgment.  Estrangement  from  God  at  its 
climax  is  a  voluntary  going  into  outer  darkness. 
This  it  is  to  be  "accursed."  Every  moral  being 
carries  the  possibility  of  it  in  his  nature. 

7.  This  liability  to  a  voluntary  abandonment  of 
all  good  by  a  moral  being  results  from  the  same 
conditions  which  render  possible  his  blessedness 
in  God. 

Nature's  law  from  least  to  greatest  things  is  a 
law  of  mysterious  duality.     The  possibilities  of  all 


120  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

things  are  massed  in  two  directions.  The  same 
constitution  of  any  thing  which  is  capable  of  good 
is  also  capable  of  evil.  The  nerve  which  can  give 
pleasure  can  also  give  pain.  The  make  of  your 
eyeball,  which  discovers  a  world  of  delight  to 
your  sense  of  beauty,  may  rack  your  brain  with 
agony  under  the  ravages  of  that  insect  discovered 
by  Dr.  Graefe,  whose  natural  food  is  the  optic 
nerve.  The  even  heart-beats  which  send  life 
throbbing  through  your  frame  with  no  conscious 
will  of  yours,  may,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye, 
become  the  throes  of  angina  pectoris. 

We  do  not  know,  that,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
this  dual  economy  could  have  been  dispensed  with. 
We  only  see  that  it  exists.  It  runs  through  all 
the  ramifications  of  human  life.  From  a  tooth- 
ache to  a  soul's  damnation,  all  evil  displaces  corre- 
sponding good,  which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  was 
equally  possible.  Nothing  has  been  created  for 
the  sake  of  evil.  No  nerve  exists  for  the  sake  of 
pain ;  no  temptation  for  the  sake  of  sin ;  no  devil 
for  the  sake  of  his  malignity.  Balancing  possi- 
bilities of  good  offset  them  all. 

This  dual  structure  governs  the  system  of  man's 
probationary  discipline  and  its  eternal  sequences. 
By  as  much  as  a  man  may  be  demonized  in  char- 
acter, and  therefore  accursed  in  destiny,  by  so 
much  may  he  be  made  godlike  in  both.  Endless 
blessing  and  endless  curse  are  in  the  balance  of 
every  man's  destiny.  The  weight  which  tips  the 
scale  is  the  breath  of  his  own  choice.     That^  the 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason,        121 

winds  of  heaven  are  not  permitted  to  visit  too 
roughly.  Not  legions  of  demoniac  tempters  can 
force  him  to  make  that  choice  to  his  own  hurt. 
God  guards  its  freedom  as  the  apple  of  His  eye. 
No  power  but  its  own  can  destroy  a  soul. 

8.  The  principle  of  liberty  in  human  destiny  by 
which  a  lost  man  achieves  his  own  perdition,  needs 
to  be  offset  by  another.  It  is  that  God  expresses 
in  the  inevitable  misery  of  sin  His  own  retributive 
sentiment  as  a  moral  governor.  He  impresses  thus 
upon  the  universe  His  own  abhorrence  of  guilt. 
The  paradox  is  essential  to  the  truth  in  its  com- 
pleteness, that  man  creates  his  own  damnation, 
and  that  God  inflicts  it.  This  complication  is  no 
anomaly :  it  exists  in  all  those  phenomena  in  which 
God  and  man  unite  in  one  result.  The  two  agen- 
cies intermingle.  God  decrees  what  man  per- 
forms. RetributiA^e  decrees  are  executed  by  man 
m  self-destruction. 

We  lose  one  of  the  prime  elements  of  punitive 
justice  if  we  so  project  man's  self-ruin  as  to  con- 
ceal the  fact  of  the  divine  infliction.  This  is  never 
the  manner  of  the  Scriptures.  There  the  divine 
infliction  is  emphasized:  it  is  made  a  theme  of 
devout  adoration.  No  hint  is  given  that  it  needs 
hiding  from  an  upright  mind.  In  the  nature  of 
things,  this  can  not  be.  We  know  God  only  as  we 
know  ourselves.  The  same  retributive  sentiment 
in  kind  must  exist  in  Him  as  in  us.  It  finds  ex- 
pression, as  ours  does,  in  the  infliction  of  retribu- 
tive pains  on  the  incorrigibly  guilty.     Among  the 


122  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

most  amiable  attributes  of  the  divine  character  in 
the  biblical  estimate,  is  that  holy  abhorrence  of 
sin  which  goes  out  from  His  inmost  nature  in  re- 
tributive inflictions.  Without  it  He  would  be  no 
longer  God :  He  could  no  longer  command  the 
affectionate  reverence  of  the  holy  universe,  or  the 
compulsory  respect  of  the  guilty  and  the  damned. 

We  must  not,  then,  in  deference  to  our  debil- 
itated sensibilities,  put  into  hiding  the  personal 
agency  of  God  in  the  doom  of  the  lost.  It  involves 
no  contradiction.  Nor  does  it  display  any  more 
mystery  than  that  which  exists  in  all  other  phe- 
nomena in  which  the  agency  of  God  and  that  of 
man  are  interblended.  The  sowing  and  the  reap- 
ing of  a  wheat-field  are  in  this  respect  the  same  as 
the  sowing  and  the  reaping  of  an  eternal  destiny. 
The  laws  of  the  soil  and  the  sun  and  the  rains  are 
God's  will :  man's  use  of  them  is  man's  will.  So 
in  moral  government,  man's  use  of  his  own  being 
to  his  own  destruction  is  his  own  doing ;  the  7nake 
of  that  being  by  which,  if  perverted,  it  becomes 
suicidal  to  its  own  happiness,  is  God's  infliction  of 
retributive  justice. 

9.  The  numbers  of  the  lost,  I  conceive,  do  not 
enter  into  the  main  question  at  all.  If  there  is 
one  lost  being  in  the  universe,  the  mystery  of  it 
is  as  profound  as  if  there  were  countless  millions. 
The  question  of  proportions  we  have  no  means 
of  solving.  When  an  inquiry  on  that  subject  was 
addressed  to  our  Lord,  He  evaded  an  answer.  I 
can  make  a  good  showing,  I  think,  for  the  belief 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason,       123 

that  tlie  saved  will  be  the  immense  majority,  and 
the  lost  an  inconsiderable  fraction  of  the  sum-total 
of  the  race.  But  God  has  chosen  to  withhold  the 
truth  from  us,  and  speculation  is  useless.  Each 
one  of  us  has  enough  to  do  to  make  his  own 
salvation  sure,  and  to  lead  as  many  others  to 
Heaven  as  he  can  on  the  way.  But  when  men 
pronounce  this  a  lost  world,  meaning  by  it  that 
the  great  majority  of  the  race  will  at  last  people 
the  world  of  despair,  they  affirm  more  than  I  find 
in  the  Word  of  God. 

The  question  of  the  numbers  of  the  lost,  I  repeat, 
does  not  affect  the  argument  one  whit.  But  it  may 
aggravate  the  dramatic  impression  of  the  truth  on 
our  sensibilities.  The  tragic  look  of  the  retribu- 
tive element  in  the  divine  economy  is  the  more 
appalling  as  the  numbers  multiply  who  incur  its 
execution.  Objection  to  the  doctrine  is  mainly  a 
matter  of  feeling.  Men  feel  the  same  in  kind,  and 
often  their  judgment  is  distorted  by  it  in  their 
estimate  of  human  government.  Why  is  it  so 
difficult  to  find  jurymen  for  a  capital  trial  ?  Why 
is  it  that  imprisonment  for  life,  though  often  in 
the  sentence,  is  rarely  in  its  execution  ?  If  a  thief 
is  running  from  the  sheriff,  why  does  the  crowd  in 
the  street  help  the  thief?  Reason  is  not  clear- 
headed if  sympathy  is  overloaded. 

Therefore  it  is  pertinent  to  relieve  the  present 
argument  from  the  pressure  of  overstrained  sensi- 
bilities. The  fact  should  be  emphasized,  that  the 
Scriptures  nowhere  affirm  that  the  major  part  of 


124  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

mankind  are  doomed  in  the  retributive  purposes 
of  God.  The  Bible  says  nothing  about  majorities. 
It  offers  to  all  men  a  free  salvation.  What  their 
free  action  will  be,  it  says  not.  I  prefer  to  leave 
the  question  of  proportion  where  God  has  lodged 
it,  —  in  His  kingdom  of  reserve.  We  make  a  wise 
advance,  and  achieve  a  grand  conquest  over  dif- 
ficulties, when  we  learn  to  accept  in  silence  the 
silences  of  God.  That  which  He  has  not  seen  fit 
to  disclose,  we  have  no  call  to  affirm  or  to  deny. 


XI. 

RETRIBUTION  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  REASON. 

PAET  n. 

SoiviE  additional  suggestions  are  necessary  to  a 
rounded  statement  of  the  subject,  as  I  am  accus- 
tomed to  put  it  to  my  own  mind.  Proceeding  in 
numerical  order  for  the  sake  of  definiteness,  I 
remark,  — 

10.  That  the  real  difficulties  of  the  faith  I  hold, 
I  freely  admit.  They  are  very  great,  and  some  of 
them  inexplicable.  I  do  not  say  unanswerable,  but 
inexplicable.  My  faith  may  answer  them  when 
my  reason  can  not  solve  them.  Make  them  what 
you  will,  I  think  I  could  double  your  estimate. 
The  whole  subject  is  a  gloomy  and  heaving  sea  to 
my  troubled  vision.  I  see  through  a  glass  darkly. 
I  can  not  say  that  forty  years  of  study  of  what 
good  and  able  men,  on  both  sides  of  the  question, 
have  thought  upon  it,  have  added  any  thing  to  a 
solution  of  the  mystery.  They  have  only  relieved 
the  doctrine  —  and  this  is  much  to  the  purpose 
of  answering  difficulties  —  of  contradictions  and 
other  infelicities  of  statement  in  its  ancient  forms. 
"Seraphic  doctors"  have  spent  their  force  upon 

125 


126  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays, 

the  mystery  in  vain.  "  Advanced  thinkers  "  have 
quailed  before  it,  and  found  refuge  in  defiant  and 
illogical  denials.  A  new  generation  has  come  upon 
the  stage  since  we  were  young,  and  new  genera- 
tions often  bring  with  them  new  solutions  of  old 
problems;  but  no  new  thing  in  religion  or  in 
philosophy  has  advanced  human  thought  one  jot 
towards  a  solution  of  this  one.  Thinkers  stand 
aghast  before  it  as  they  did  four  thousand  years 
ago,  perhaps,  when  the  patriarch  inquired  in  his 
inexplicable  misery,  "  Wherefore  do  the  wicked 
live  ? "  That  question,  extended  from  this  to 
other  worlds,  finds  no  answer.  The  ages  are 
dumb  before  it.  There  lies  the  fact  of  evil  and 
its  penal  fires  embedded  in  the  Christian  theology, 
and  there  it  lies  in  reduplicated  gloom  in  the 
theology  of  nature.  To  me  it  looks  as  terrific  as 
when  it  first  threw  its  lurid  glare  over  my  childish 
conceptions  of  human  destiny.  I  concede  all  this. 
I  will  not  shrink  from  any  sequence  in  the  argu- 
ment which  may  fairly  be  derived  from  the  con- 
cession. 

But  the  mystery  of  a  truth  is  one  thing;  the 
evidence  of  the  fact,  another.  My  belief  has  to 
do  only  with  the  evidence  of  the  fact.  In  the 
point  of  fact,  I  find  that  reason  and  revelation 
conspire  to  bear  witness  to  one  thing.  This  differ- 
ence only,  I  discover,  —  that  reason  is  the  more 
formidable  and  portentous  of  the  two.  Reason  is 
merciless  in  its  teachings.  The  only  remedial  or 
remonstrant  force  I  find,  which  is  at  all  commen- 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason*        127 

surate  with  the  ravages  of  sin  in  this  world,  I  read 
in  the  words  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  depth  saith  it 
is  not  in  me,  and  the  sea  saith  it  is  not  with  me. 
Nature  is  mute  as  the  Sphinx. 

I  find  the  mystery,  however,  not  where  you 
seem  to  locate  it.  Why  God  should  have  created 
beings  who  would  weave  around  themselves  the 
network  of  the  endless  curse,  is  the  mystery  which 
I  do  not  pretend  to  solve.  On  that  problem,  I 
profess  no  belief.  None  is  required  by  the  Word 
of  God,  as  I  interpret  it :  none  is  suggested  by 
the  book  of  Nature.  But  that  some  men  should 
go  to  an  accursed  Avorld,  sin  and  sinners  being 
what  they  are,  is  no  mystery.  Where  else  can 
they  go  in  a  spiritual  universe?  That  there 
should  he  a  Hell,  sin  and  sinners  at  their  climax 
of  moral  growth  being  what  they  are,  is  no  mys- 
tery. What  other  place  is  in  moral  affinity  with 
them  ?  Such  a  world  is  inevitable,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  in  a  universe  in  which  sin  is  embattled 
against  God  behind  the  ramparts  of  moral  freedom. 

That  which  Emerson  goes  out  of  his  way  to  call 
"the  vindictive  mythology  of  Calvinism,"  is,  in 
this  respect,  only  a  reprint  of  the  theology  of 
nature.  Both  are  dumb  before  the  grim  facts 
of  sin  and  pain.  The  mystery  of  both,  a  deist  is 
as  much  bound  to  explain  as  I  am.  If  he  is  an 
honest  inquirer,  he  will  confess,  as  I  do,  that  the 
reasons  why  God  should  permit  such  evils  to  rav- 
age the  universe  which  He  has  created  are  beyond 
our  comprehension.     Their  duration  has  no  con- 


128  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

cern  with  the  problem.  Their  existence  for  eter- 
nity is  no  more  inexplicable  than  their  existence 
for  an  hour.  Theu^  being  at  all  in  the  realm  of 
an  almighty  and  benevolent  God  is  the  insoluble 
mystery. 

But  must  I  therefore  withhold  my  faith  from 
the  facts  ?  An  affirmative  to  this  reaches  a  long 
way.  If  I  refuse  to  believe  every  thing,  the 
reasons  of  which  are  beyond  my  depth,  my  creed 
must  be  conveniently  brief.  Even  the  testimony 
of  my  senses  can  not  do  much  for  me.  To  a 
believer  in  the  infinity  of  God  and  the  finiteness 
of  man,  it  can  not  be  philosophical  to  be  over- 
whelmed by  the  existence  of  difficulties  in  the 
divine  administration.  To  cower  before  seeming 
contradictions  even,  is  not  manly.  Dr.  Arnold 
manifested  the  self-collection  of  a  philosophical 
and  manly  mind,  when,  as  his  biographer  describes 
him,  "  Before  a  confessed  and  unconquerable  diffi- 
culty his  mind  reposed  as  quietly  as  in  possession 
of  a  discovered  truth."  Such,  I  conceive,  should 
be  the  poise  of  a  believer  in  the  biblical  doctrine 
of  retribution. 

Dr.  Paley  has  recorded  a  principle  which  every 
wise  man  finds  use  for  in  such  researches  as  these. 
It  is,  in  substance,  that  we  should  never  suffer 
what  we  know  to  be  disturbed  by  what  we  do  not 
know.  Bishop  Butler,  too,  —  the  mind  to  which 
the  Christian  world  owes  more  than  to  any  other 
for  the  solid  anchorage  of  faith, — lays  down  a  law 
which  unbelievers  in  the  retributive  teachings  of 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason,        129 

Christianity  will  do  well  to  remember :  "If  a 
truth  be  established,  objections  are  nothing.  The 
one  is  founded  on  our  knowledge ;  the  other,  on 
our  ignorance." 

11.  You  seem  to  me  to  make  much  —  too  much 
—  of  the  concessions,  like  those  which  I  here  make, 
and  which  are  often  made  by  believers  in  this  doc- 
trine, to  the  effect  that  it  wounds  and  shocks  our 
sensibilities.  Other  disbelievers  have  done  the 
same.  So  much  has  been  said  of  the  concessions 
made  by  the  Rev.  Albert  Barnes,  in  his  sermon 
entitled  "  The  love  of  God  in  the  gift  of  a  Saviour," 
to  which  you  refer,  that  I  venture  to  say  here  what 
I  believe  he  meant  to  express  by  those  remarkable 
passages.  They  have  been  interpreted  as  evidence 
that  in  heart  he  did  not  and  could  not  believe  the 
dogma  he  professed  to  teach.  We  are  told  that  it 
is  too  horrible  for  any  sane  man's  credence,  and 
that  we  know  it. 

Let  me  say,  then,  what  I  personally  know  of 
the  theologic  temper  of  believers  in  the  doctrine, 
and  specially  that  of  Albert  Barnes.  We  make 
concessions  in  good  faith.  We  believe  them  to  be 
due  to  candor  in  the  argument,  and  to  the  honest 
convictions  of  unbelievers.  They  are  entitled  to 
all  that  can  be  fairly  inferred  from  such  conces- 
sions. We  have  no  secret  faith  to  shield,  no  mental 
reservations  to  save  us  from  contradiction.  But 
they  do  not  detract  from  the  faith  we  profess  one 
whit.  It  is  because  that  faith  rests,  as  we  think, 
on  an  impregnable  groundwork,  that  we  are  able 


130  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

to  make  tliem.  To  our  own  minds,  they  are  an 
expression  of  our  unwavering  confidence.  Our 
habit  of  mind  on  this  whole  class  of  truths  is  one 
of  repose  in  the  wdsdom  and  rectitude  of  God. 
We  believe  them  because  we  believe  in  God.  Their 
unfathomable  mystery  we  leave  to  Him.  We  be- 
lieve, that,  in  some  way,  the  endless  suffering  of 
endless  guilt  is  not  only  consistent  with,  but  is 
itself,  a  signal  illustration  of  the  benevolence  of 
God.  We  expect  one  day  to  see  this  as  we  can 
not  now.  We  do  already  see  in  part.  We  see 
that,  assuming  the  existence  of  guilt  as  a  volun- 
tary evil,  the  suffering  follows  as  an  inevitable 
sequence,  for  which  God  is  not  responsible.  The 
mystery  of  His  permission  of  the  guilt  in  His  moral 
government,  we  expect  under  improved  conditions 
of  research  in  another  life  to  be  able  to  solve.  In 
this  exjjectant  faith  w^e  rest,  waiting  for  our  Lord's 
appearing.  We  think  this  as  reasonable,  as  philo- 
sophical, as  the  expectant  faith  of  Leverrier,  when 
he  declared,  reasoning  from  astronomical  phenom- 
ena, that,  in  a  certain  sjDot  in  the  heavens,  a  new 
star  must  one  day  appear.  Such  I  have  reason  to 
know  is  the  prevailing  equipoise  of  mind  on  this 
subject  among  the  vast  majority  of  believers. 

I  knew  Albert  Barnes.  I  had  such  intimacy 
with  him  as  a  youthful  friend  has  with  his  senior 
and  pastor.  I  know  that  the  "  surprising  confes- 
sions "  of  which  you  speak,  were  not  indicative  of 
any,  even  momentary,  relaxation  of  his  faith.  He 
felt  the  same  recoil  of  sensibility  from  the  theology 


Retribution  in  the  Liglit  of  Reason.        131 

of  nature  which  he  confessed  from  the  biblical 
revelation  of  an  endless  Hell.  In  his  theological 
temperament  he  was  one  of  the  calmest  of  men. 
His  faith,  as  it  ultimately  cr3^stallized  in  his  mind, 
was  evenly  balanced  and  self-consistent.  It  was  a 
crescent  faith  to  the  last.  He  entered  on  manhood 
with  not  a  shred  of  inherited  belief.  He  held  that 
form  of  infidelity  which  is  not  the  fruit  of  an  un- 
godly life,  to  which  men  flee  for  refuge  from  a  con- 
demning conscience  :  it  was  the  result  of  an  honest 
intellectual  inability  to  receive  the  current  evi- 
dences of  Christianity.  From  that  point  he  fought 
his  way  against  the  redoubled  forces  of  skeptical 
science,  which  characterized  the  times,  till  every 
doctrine  of  the  biblical  system  had  fixed  itself  in 
his  mind  with  the  authority  of  original  discovery. 
He  had  inherited  none  of  it.  In  that  faith  he  lived 
and  died. 

Is  it  manly  controversy  to  use  the  concessions 
of  a  candid  thinker  like  him  as  proof  of  secret 
unbelief  or  doubt  ?  He  meant  no  such  thing  by 
them,  and  felt  none.  Neither  do  the  great  major- 
ity of  believers  in  an  endless  punishment,  when 
they  grant  in  the  argument  the  appalling  nature 
of  the  truth  in  its  bearing  upon  their  sympathies 
as  men.  They  would  be  less  than  men  if  they  did 
not  feel  it,  yet  in  their  own  estimate  they  would 
be  less  than  Christian  men  if  they  did  not  believe 
it. 

12.  The  difficulties  of  our  faith  in  endless  retri- 
bution  seem   immensely  less  to  our  minds  than 


132  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

those  of  disbelief.  Faith  in  it  is  wrapped  up  in 
our  faith  in  the  Scriptures  as  a  revelation  from 
God.  The  doctrine  is  so  obvious  and  pervasive  in 
the  New  Testament,  that  the  rejection  of  the  one 
necessitates  the  rejection  of  the  other.  The  two 
stand  or  fall  together.  Expurgate  the  doctrine 
wherever  we  find  it  there,  and  not  enough  would 
be  left  to  be  called  a  revelation  from  Heaven. 
The  expurgations  would  riddle  the  whole  of  it 
with  exceptions. 

Our  Lord  certainly  teaches  the  doctrine  if  it  can 
be  taught  in  human  speech.  I  never  knew  an 
earnest  educated  unbeliever  in  the  Bible,  and  to 
that  extent  an  impartial  looker-on  upon  our  rival 
faiths,  who  did  not  find  in  it  the  revelation  of  an 
endless  Hell.  Did  you  ?  Theodore  Parker  found 
it  there.  Voltaire  and  David  Hume  found  it  there. 
Stuart  Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer,  Strauss  and 
Kenan,  have  all  found  it  there.  If  it  is  not  there, 
human  language  can  not  contain  it  in  intelligible 
words.  The  attempt  to  expurgate  the  Christian 
Scriptures  of  the  doctrine  by  exegetical  adroitness 
is  without  exception  the  most  astounding  example 
of  special  pleading  in  the  history  of  religious  con- 
troversy. Respectable  science  it  is  not.  Men  who 
believe  it  to  be  true,  must  have  a  secret  fear  that 
it  is  not  so.  As  to  the  common  readers  of  the 
Bible  who  come  to  it  with  no  scholastic  theory  to 
defend,  they  have  no  conception  of  what  we  mean 
when  we  tell  them  that  the  doctrine  of  eternal 
retribution  is  not  expressed  in  the  teachings  of  our 
Lord. 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason.        133 

Reason  makes  another  point  respecting  the  ex- 
clusion of  this  doctrine  from  the  Scriptures.  If 
we  accept  the  principle  of  interpretation  which 
that  exclusion  involves,  we  must  find  room  for  all 
its  corollaries.  If,  then,  we  allow  our  moral  in- 
stincts to  explain  away  the  retributive  teachings 
of  Christ,  we  must  allow  the  moral  instincts  of 
other  men  to  explain  away  any  thing  and  every 
thing  else  to  which  they  take  exception.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  would  long  ago  have  been 
foredoomed  by  the  moral  instincts  of  Sparta.  The 
refined  idolatry  of  Athens  would  have  expunged 
the  Decalogue.  The  moral  nature  of  the  Ameri- 
can aborigines  would  have  laughed  at  the  beati- 
tudes. Savage  intuitions  the  world  over  would 
have  scouted  St.  Paul's  picture  of  Christian  char- 
ity. Not  a  solitary  doctrine  or  sentiment  or  song 
or  prophecy  in  the  Scriptures  which  modern  civil- 
ization exalts  for  its  profound  truth,  or  pure  moral- 
ity, or  poetic  beauty,  can  be  named  which  some- 
body's "  ethical  instincts "  have  not  denounced 
and  hooted  at. 

When  John  Eliot  first  preached  to  the  Nipmuck 
Indians  at  Nonantum  the  Christian  theory  of  the 
forgiveness  of  injuries,  a  grunt  of  incredulous 
derision  ran  around  the  circle  of  his  hearers  as 
they  sat  before  him  on  their  haunches.  The 
"  moral  intuitions  "  of  Nipmuck  culture  knew  bet- 
ter than  that.  On  the  theory  here  combated,  the 
Nipmuck  theology  was  right.     Why  not  ? 

But  what  is   a  revelation   worth   which  must 


134  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

"  stand  and  deliver  "  at  the  door  of  every  wigwam 
where  the  Nipmuck  nature  in  man  may  see  fit  to 
challenge  its  authority  ?  Our  moral  instincts  are 
a  better  o-uide  without  than  w^ith  a  craven  revela- 
tion  which  may  be  so  shorn  of  its  dignity  by  every 
passer-by.  The  boar  out  of  the  wood  doth  waste 
it,  and  the  wild  beast  of  the  field  doth  devour  it. 
Coleridge  very  shrewdly  says,  "  Christianity  can 
not  probably  be  of  much  worth  to  men  who  pay  it 
no  other  compliment  than  that  of  calling  by  its 
name  the  previous  decisions  of  their  own  mother- 
wit."  This  is  precisely  what  those  do  who  inter- 
polate into  the  Scriptures  their  own  moral  instincts 
in  flat  contradiction  to  the  plainest  records  of 
inspiration.  Better,  far  better,  is  no  revelation  at 
all  than  one  which  must  be  constantly  confounded 
by  the  "  mother-wit "  of  the  reader. 

In  accepting  the  facts  of  the  revelation  we  have, 
and  in  accepting  the  relief  it  gives  to  the  equally 
inexplicable  facts  of  nature,  leaving  the  m3''steries 
of  both  unsolved,  do  I  not  choose  the  faith  which 
is  infinitely  the  more  credible,  the  more  hopeful, 
the  more  consonant  with  reason  and  with  the 
intimations  of  conscience?  Faith  in  an  infinite 
God,  without  infinite  mysteries  and  insoluble  dif- 
ficulties, would  be  a  contradiction.  "  A  God 
understood  is  no  God  at  all." 

13.  It  amazes  me  that  you  find  it  so  difficult  to 
believe  in  retributive  government  in  the  moral 
world  when  the  natural  world  is  so  full  of  it.  The 
logic  of  analogy  is  all   one  way.     Where  is  the 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason.        135 

solitary  exception  ?  When  does  Nature  ever  for- 
give ?  Strike  at  a  law  of  nature  ever  so  playfully, 
and  something  within  it  will  strike  back.  You 
will  get  the  worst  of  it.  You  may  as  safely  play 
with  a  nest  of  rattlesnakes.  Nature  never  allows 
herself  to  be  insulted  with  impunity.  You  are 
always  on  your  good  behavior  in  dealing  with  her. 
She  may  take  her  time  for  the  retaliatory  blow : 
she  is  too  sure  of  her  victim  to  be  in  haste.  But 
the  blow  will  come,  and  with  reduplicated  force 
for  the  waiting. 

Pagan  theology  found  out  long  ago  that  the 
mills  of  the  gods  grind  slow,  but  that  they  grind 
to  powder.  All  nations  have  the  proverb  in  their 
own  way.  Why  should  not  the  mills  grind  in  the 
same  way  in  the  moral  world  ?  God  in  conscience, 
and  God  in  nature,  are  one  Being.  He  will  not 
contradict  in  one  kingdom  the  law  He  has  enacted 
in  the  other.  To  deny  it  seems  to  me  insanely 
unphilosophical  and  inconsecutive. 

Besides,  the  fact  deserves  to  be  repeated  that 
nature  is  vastly  more  relentless  than  the  Scriptures 
in  her  retributive  teachings.  Swedenborg  says 
that  "nature  makes  almost  as  much  demand  on 
our  faith  as  miracles  do."  She  makes  more.  Her 
retributive  dealings  are  harder  to  understand,  more 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  perfections  of  God. 
Not  a  gleam  of  redemptive  promise  do  we  find  in 
the  world  of  matter.  Order  and  sequence  there,  are 
always  the  order  and  sequence  of  law,  never  those 
of  remedial  devices.     The  iron  rod  is  never  laid 


136  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

aside,  never  broken,  never  bent  out  of  plumb.  It 
is  not  Calvinism  that  is  "  vindictive : "  it  is  gravita^ 
tion.  If  you  wish  to  find  the  original  of  the  old 
Greek  Nemesis,  you  must  go,  not  to  the  sacred 
books  of  Christianity,  but  to  the  volumes  of  mod- 
ern science  which  treat  of  the  laws  of  mechanics, 
of  electricity,  of  heredity.  There,  if  anywhere,  is 
vengeance. 

The  God  we  worship  is  one  God.  Then,  His 
handiwork  in  nature  should  lead  us  to  expect  the 
disclosure  of  endless  penalty  for  endless  guilt  in  a 
revelation  of  His  moral  government.  If  it  were 
not  there,  an  unanswerable  presumptive  argument 
would  be  established  that  it  is  not  a  revelation 
from  heaven. 

14.  One  thing  more,  and  my  story  is  ended. 
The  use  so  often  made  of  the  biblical  symbol  of 
fire  to  make  the  retributive  idea  odious  and  hide- 
ous, seems  to  me  unworthy  of  manly  and  cultured 
controversy.  We  must  expect  it  from  ignorant 
and  passionate  thinkers,  but  as  argument  it  is 
very  shallow.  You  and  I  do  not  need  to  remind 
each  other  that  that  symbol  is  not  a  dogmatic  form 
of  truth.  The  veriest  tyro  in  biblical  interpreta- 
tion ought  to  know  it.  In  common  speech  we  em- 
ploy the  same  and  similar  figures  to  express  vividly 
similar  ideas.  We  speak  of  "burning  passions," 
of  "  fiery  lusts,"  of  "  flaming  anger."  We  tell  of 
a  man  who  frothed  at  the  mouth,  or  ground  his 
teeth,  in  impotent  rage.  Our  Saviour  takes  sim- 
ilar liberties  with  dramatic  and  figurative  speech. 


Retribution  in  the  Light  of  Reason,        137 

Suppose,  now,  that  some  one  sliould  report  us  as 
affirming  that  we  saw  a  man  roasting  over  a  slow 
fire  in  his  lusts,  or  showing  signs  of  hydrophobia  in 
his  wrath.  Would  that  be  argument  ?  He  might 
raise  a  ripple  of  inane  laughter  at  his  conceit,  but 
would  he  discredit  our  story  ? 

So  I  take  all  attempts  of  men  to  render  odious 
or  ridiculous  the  doctrine  of  endless  punishment 
by  putting  the  symbol  of  fire  to  a  use  for  which  it 
was  never  employed  by  Him  who  originated  it. 
In  His  lips  it  meant  the  most  solemn  and  appalling 
reality  in  the  history  of  the  universe,  so  far  as  it 
is  known  to  us.  It  meant  that  guilt,  at  its  climax; 
of  finished  and  indurated  character,  involves  in  its 
own  nature,  and  by  inevitable  sequence,  a  spiritual 
misery  of  which  literal  speech  can  give  no  adequate 
conception.  It  is  such  that  no  other  material 
emblem  can  give  us  so  truthful  an  impression  of 
it  as  that  of  a  surging  sea  of  flame.  This,  if  it  he 
a  reality,  of  which  some  who  walk  our  streets,  and 
give  us  daily  greeting,  may  be  in  peril,  is  too  ter- 
rific a  reality  to  be  set  in  the  frame  of  burlesque. 

Is  it  not  ? 

Very  truly  yours. 

In  the  fellowship  of  search  for  truth, 

AUSTIN  PHELPS. 


XII. 
ENDLESS  SIN  UNDER  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  GOD. 

Is  its  existence  consistent  with  tlie  Divine  char- 
acter? On  this  inquiry  ultimately  hang  all  objec- 
tions to  the  retributive  teachings  of  the  Scriptures. 
Obvious  as  those  teachings  are  on  the  face  of  them, 
they  will  be  nullified  by  violent  and  tortuous  in- 
terpretations if  the  secret  feeling  of  the  reader 
is,  that  they  are  a  calumny  against  God.  As  one 
objector  expressed  it  in  the  argument,  ''  Your  God 
is  my  Devil."  So  long  as  this  conception  of  the 
doctrine  exists,  argument  is  useless.  The  plainest 
assertions  of  the  Bible  go  for  nothing.  A  book, 
no  matter  what  its  claims  to  inspiration  are,  which 
ascribes  Satanic  character  to  God,  its  professed 
author,  can  have  no  force  as  an  authority  to  a 
reasonable  mind. 

The  question  narrows  itself  in  the  -.last  analysis 
to  the  endless  existence  of  Sin.  Suffering  is  not 
the  mystery  of  this  world.  Sin  is  the  mystery. 
Assume  sin  as  the  great  moral  fact  of  its  history, 
and  no  suffering  is  inexplicable.  Sin  and  suffer- 
ing—  suffering  and  sin  —  are  twin  factors  in  hu- 
man destiny.    Can,  or  will,  a  benevolent  God  create 

138 


Sin  Under  the  G-overnment  of  God.        139 

beings  —  millions  or  one,  it  makes  no  difference  — 
who,  He  knows,  will  sin  for  ever?  This  is  the 
crucial  question. 

1.  In  reply,  let  it  be  observed  that  we  do  not 
know  that  the  prevention  of  sin,  under  a  perfect 
system  of  moral  government,  is  possible  to  the 
power  of  God.  In  the  constitution  of  things,  — 
we  utter  a  truism  in  saying  it,  —  some  contingent 
cies  involve  contradictions.  God  can  not  decree 
absurdities.  He  can  not  so  change  the  mathemati^ 
cal  relations  of  numbers,  that,  to  the  human  mind, 
twice  five  shall  be  less  or  more  than  ten.  God 
can  not  so  metamorphose  the  nature  of  colors, 
that,  their  relations  to  the  human  eye  remaining 
what  they  are,  black  and  white  shall  change  places 
in  our  vision,  or  the  sky  be  green,  and  the  grass 
blue.  God  can  not  so  transmute  the  pleasures  of 
the  senses,  that,  their  nature  remaining  unchanged, 
the  eye  shall  delight  in  a  symphony  of  Beethoven, 
and  the  ear  in  the  "  Sistine  Madonna."  These 
are  changes  which  God  is  as  powerless  to  effect  as 
man.  They  involve  absurdities.  They  bear  no 
relation  to  omnipotent  power. 

For  aught  that  we  know,  this  same  principle  may 
pervade  the  moral  universe.  We  live  under  moral 
government.  Our  chief  distinction  is  the  posses- 
sion of  a  moral  nature.  Within  the  limits  pre- 
scribed to  moral  freedom,  a  moral  being,  be  he  nmn 
or  angel  or  devil,  is  as  imperial  in  his  autocracy  as 
God  is  in  the  immeasurable  range  of  His  being. 
This,  God  has  Himself  ordained  in  the  creation  of 


140  My  Study:  and  Other  Ussays. 

a  moral  universe.  Moral  freedom  is  a  prerogative 
of  godlike  nobility.  It  is  the  chief  thing  in  which 
man  is  God's  image.  The  stellar  universe  is  not 
equal  in  imperial  dignity  to  one  thinking,  sentient, 
self-determining  mind.  Man's  supreme  endowment 
is  not  immortality :  it  is  his  ability  to  be  what  he 
wills  to  be,  to  do  what  he  chooses  to  do,  to  become 
what  he  elects  to  become  in  liis  growth  of  ages. 
This  ethereal  faculty  in  man  eludes  analysis. 
Beyond  the  tamest  of  tame  words,  no  man  can 
define  or  describe  it.  A  child  can  exercise  it,  but 
royal  academies  can  not  tell  me  what  it  is.  It 
is  the  ultimate  and  superlative  something  which 
makes  man  a  man.  Without  it,  he  would  have  no 
right  to  say  "  I."  Without  it,  a  humming-bird  is 
his  equal :  with  it,  he  is  the  kindred  of  angels. 

Now,  we  do  not  know  that  such  an  imperial 
being,  remaining  sovereign  of  his  moral  freedom, 
autocrat  of  himself,  creator  of  his  own  character, 
framer  of  his  own  destiny,  can  be  kept  under  all 
conditions  of  probation  from  a  moral  catastroj)he. 
There  is  more  than  a  poet's  fancy  in  Wordsworth's 
conception  of  "  man's  unconquerable  mind."  Mind 
is  as  absolute  over  its  own  act  in  evil  as  in  good. 
From  the  nature  of  the  case,  therefore,  it  can  not 
be  proved  that  a  being  who  can  sin  will  not  sin. 
Power  to  do  is  itself  temptation  to  do.  "  The  free- 
w^ill  tempted  me,  —  the  power  to  do,  or  not  to  do," 
says  Coleridge's  Wallenstein.  Few  men  can  stand 
on  the  summit  of  a  lofty  tower  without  a  momen- 
tary sense  of  peril  in  the  consciousness  of  power 


Sin  Under  the  G-overnment  of  God.        141 

to  plunge  headlong.  A  special  police  guard  the 
Colonne  Vendome  in  Paris,  to  prevent  that  form 
of  suicide.  So  fascinating  often  is  the  power  to 
do  an  evil  deed ! 

The  same  fascination  is  involved  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  moral  freedom  under  the  government 
of  God.  Its  possibilities  of  good  are  balanced  by 
equal  possibilities  of  evil.  Which  shall  become 
history  depends  on  the  tempted  being,  and  ulti- 
mately on  him  only.  His  biography,  in  this  par- 
ticular, is  autobiography.  His  own  hand  holds 
the  iron  pen.  In  the  case  of  man,  therefore,  we 
do  not  know  but  that  God  could  not  have  saved 
him  from  the  fall,  except  by  annihilating  his  moral 
freedom :  or,  if  not  that,  inflicting  some  unknown 
damage,  which  to  his  moral  destiny  would  be 
equivalent.  True,  we  can  not  affirm  that  it  was 
so ;  but  we  must  prove  that  it  was  not  so  before 
we  can  reasonably  charge  God  with  wrong  in  the 
permission  and  punishment  of  incorrigible  sin. 

2.  We  do  not  know  that  the  prevention  of  sin, 
under  a  perfect  moral  government,  was  possible 
to  the  wisdom  of  God.  The  infinite  and  eternal 
expediencies  of  the  moral  universe  may  have  for- 
bidden it.  We  do  not  know  the  interminable 
complications  of  any  act  of  God.  A  moment's 
thought  is  enough  to  baffle  us  in  the  inquiry. 
Nothing  that  He  does  is  unrelated.  Every  thing 
is  linked  by  invisible  chains  of  sequence  and 
causation  to  every  other  thing.  A  sublime  unity 
compacts  together  all  His  ways.     His  dominion  is 


142  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

imperial :  one  aim,  one  plan,  one  animus,  rules  the 
whole.  Speaking  in  the  dialect  of  human  govern^ 
ments,  one  policy  sways  the  universe.  God  never 
unravels  His  own  decrees.  There  are  no  contra^ 
ries  and  confusions  in  the  system  of  things.  Law 
here  is  law  there.  Orion  does  not  collide  with 
the  Pleiades,  and  the  Pleiades  do  not  jostle  Orion. 
One  force  holds  all  things  to  their  grooves.  "  Pie 
is  of  one  mind,  and  who  can  turn  Him  ?  " 

The  same  unity  belongs,  so  far  as  we  know, 
to  moral  law.  We  do  not  know,  therefore,  the 
remote  consequences  of  a  policy  chosen  for  the 
administration  of  one  world.  It  may  have  invis- 
ible convolutions  and  reticulations  in  the  history 
of  other  worlds.  To  have  chosen  the  policy  of 
prevention  in  the  control  of  sin  here,  might  have 
necessitated  revolutionary  changes  elsewhere.  As- 
tronomers say  that  a  minute  less  or  more  in  the 
diurnal  revolution  of  Jupiter,  gravitation  remain- 
ing as  it  is,  would  sooner  or  later  fill  the  universe 
with  clashing  planets.  A  change  of  ]3roportion 
in  certain  chemical  elements,  which  now  lie  peace- 
fully side  by  side  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  would 
rend  the  globe  asunder.  Who  can  prove  that 
there  are  not  similar  niceties  of  adjustment  in  the 
working  of  moral  laws?  To  have  prevented  sin 
here,  by  any  power  not  fatal  to  moral  freedom, 
might  have  shattered  the  foundation  of  moral 
government  everywhere.  True,  we  can  not  affirm 
it,  but  neither  can  wq  deny  it. 

We  reasonably  ask,  then,  may  it  not  have  been 


Sin  Under  the  Grovernment  of  God.         143 

conceivably  better  that  one  world  should  have 
been  left  to  voluntary  ruin  than  that  all  worlds 
should  have  been  void  of  populations  of  intelligent 
and  moral  beings  ?  That  some  inhabitants  of  one 
such  fallen  world  should  be  left  unrepentant  to  the 
doom  they  have  chosen,  —  is  not  even  this  a  less 
appalling  calamity  than  that  the  history  of  sinless 
worlds  without  number  should  have  remained  un- 
written ?  Shall  all  best  things  in  the  universe  be 
forbidden,  that  some  may  be  saved  from  abuse  ? 

We  affirm,  then,  in  view  of  such  unanswerable 
questions,  that  it  may  not  have  been  possible  to 
the  wisdom  of  God  to  prevent  the  entrance  of  sin 
and  consequent  retribution  into  the  moral  universe 
through  the  history  of  man.  Infinite  expediency 
may  have  been  against  it.  True,  we  can  not  affirm 
that  it  was  so ;  but  we  must  prove  that  it  was  not 
so,  before  we  can  charge  God  with  wrong  in  the 
infliction  of  endless  retribution  upon  endless  sin. 

3.  If  it  may  not  be  possible  to  divine  power, 
and  if  it  may  not  be  possible  to  divine  wisdom,  to 
prevent  sin  in  a  perfect  moral  government,  then 
we  affirm  further  that  it  may  not  be  possible  to 
divine  benevolence.  A  benevolent  God  can  do 
only  things  in  their  nature  practicable.  He  can 
do  only  wise  things.  He  can  do  only  that  which 
infinite  power  can  do  under  the  direction  of  infinite 
wisdom. 

The  non-prevention  of  sin,  therefore,  in  this 
world  of  ours  may  have  been  the  best  thing  which, 
under  the  conditions  here  existing,  benevolence 


144  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

could  desire  and  plan  for.  Speaking  after  the 
manner  of  human  governments,  the  policy  of  non- 
intervention may  have  been  the  policy  of  love. 
In  other  departments  of  God's  working,  that 
policy  often  assumes  to  our  short-sighted  vision 
frightful  developments. 

To  accomplish,  in  certain  contingencies,  the 
purposes  of  benevolence,  man  must  be  let  alone. 
The  laws  of  nature  must  be  allowed  to  do  what 
they  will  with  him.  Invisible  and  inodorous  gases 
in  the  atmosphere  must  poison  his  life-blood.  Un- 
seen tempters  must  be  let  loose  upon  him.  Malign 
influences  must  contest  the  supremacy  in  his  des- 
tiny. Individual  well-being  must  be  overborne 
by  the  fall  of  nations.  Majorities  must  crush  the 
few.  Great  wheels  must  crumple  up  the  little 
wheels.  Infancy  and  helplessness  must  go  under 
the  hoof  of  power.  Above  all,  man's  own  will 
must  often  be  left  in  moral  solitude.  It  must 
work  out  his  destiny,  for  weal  or  woe,  alone.  For 
reasons  unknown,  God  must  stand  aloof,  and  be 
still,  while  the  tragedy  of  life  goes  on.  Such  is 
sometimes  the  look  of  things  to  our  bleared  vision. 

Now,  the  point  of  the  present  argument  is,  that 
this  principle  of  non-interference  may  lie  back  of, 
and  under,  the  non-prevention  of  sin.  Within  cer- 
tain bounds,  and  as  related  to  the  destiny  of  certain 
races,  and  in  certain  contingencies  of  moral  trial, 
to  let  sin  alone  may  be  the  dictate  of  benevolence. 
Who  can  say  that  it  is  not  so  ?  To  leave  guilt  in 
the  awful  extremity  of  evil,  to  which  it  naturally 


Sin  Under  the  Government  of  God.       145 

gravitates  by  the  force  of  its  own  momentum,  may 
sometimes  be  the  first  and  last  and  best  decree  of 
infinite  benignity. 

True  again,  reasoning  from  the  nature  of  things, 
we  can  not  affirm  that  it  is  so ;  but  the  fact  perti- 
nent to  the  present  argument  is,  that  we  must 
prove  that  it  is  not  so,  before  we  can  hold  God 
unworthy  in  His  treatment  of  endless  guilt  by  the 
infliction  of  endless  pain. 

4.  The  views  already  advanced  involve  another, 
which  demands  a  distinct  development. 

It  is  that  we  do  not  know  that  the  prevention 
of  sin  is  possible  under  that  feature  of  God's  moral 
government  by  which  the  universe  is  bound  to- 
gether in  a  community  of  interests  like  those  of  a 
human  family.  This  is  one  of  the  devices  of  in- 
finite wisdom.  We  have  observed  that  God's  gov- 
ernment is  a  unit.  It  is  more  than  this.  It  is  a 
parental  government.  Angels  and  men  are  united 
in  filial  sympathies  and  affections.  They  are  stu- 
dious of  the  same  disclosures  of  God.  Their  expe- 
riences make  up  one  great  family  history.  The 
creation,  the  fall,  and  the  recovery  of  this  world, 
are  themes  of  angelic  as  they  are  of  human  re- 
search. The  ties  which  bind  together  human  and 
angelic  destinies  are  the  ties  of  one  household,  of 
which  Christ  is  the  Head.  In  Heaven,  as  pictured 
by  St.  John,  angels  and  men  unite  in  the  same 
liturgic  service,  sing  the  same  songs  of  adoration, 
form  one  devout  assembly.  They  surround  God's 
throne  in  fraternal  companionship. 


146  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

How  many  more  orders  of  intelligence  people 
the  universe,  we  do  not  know.  Analogy  suggests 
the  probability  that  they  are  practically  beyond 
computation.  Telescopic  research  has  never  found 
the  frontier  of  the  sidereal  creation.  It  is  incredi- 
ble that  so  vast  and  complicated  a  system  of  mate- 
rial things  is  not  filled,  or  to  be  filled,  with  moral 
systems  of  equal  magnitude.  We  discover  in  the 
ways  of  God  the  element  of  aspiration.  He  is 
content  only  with  best  things.  We  reasonably 
infer,  therefore,  that  our  resplendent  heavens  are, 
or  are  to  be,  the  abodes  of  intelligence  and  virtue, 
not  of  ichthyosauri  and  mastodons.  If  so,  they  are, 
or  are  to  be,  the  homes  of  one  immense  family,  over 
which  God  administers  a  paternal  government. 
This  earth  is  but  an  infinitesimal  fragment.  As 
proportioned  to  the  planet  Jupiter  alone,  our  globe 
is  of  the  size  of  a  pea  on  a  circular  ground  three 
or  four  inches  in  diameter.  What  must  be  its 
inconceivable  minuteness  as  compared  with  the 
whole  stellar  universe  !  Such  is  the  probable 
diminutiveness  of  our  human  races  in  the  com- 
parison with  the  whole  family  of  the  Heavenly 
Father.  Most  reasonably  did  the  Psalmist  antici- 
pate the  discoveries  of  modern  science,  and  exclaim, 
"  When  I  consider  the  heavens,  what  is  man  ?  " 

Relationships  of  family  on  a  scale  of  such  im- 
measurable amplitude  must,  speaking  in  human 
dialect,  lay  a  heavy  tax  on  the  wisdom  and  benev- 
olence of  God  in  the  administration  of  His  laws. 
To  a  human  eye,  it  must  be  an  administration  of 


Sin  Under  the  Government  of  God.       147 

inconceivable  intricacy.  Reasons  for  and  against 
any  policy  of  government  must  be  of  immeas- 
urable reach,  and  unfathomable  depth.  Problems 
which  no  human  wisdom  can  solve,  must  be 
involved  in  its  execution.  Who,  by  searching, 
can  find  out  God  ?  A  wise  and  loving  father  can 
not  seek  the  good  of  one  child  at  the  cost  of  all 
the  rest.  The  interests  of  all  are  bound  up  in  the 
welfare  of  each,  and  that  of  each  in  those  of  all. 
John  Quincy  Adams  once  amended  the  aphorism 
of  human  government,  that  "it  should  seek  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number."  "No," 
said  "  the  old  man  eloquent : "  "  Government  should 
seek  the  greatest  good  of  «7Z."  This  is  pre-em- 
inently true  of  God's  parental  government  over 
the  universal  family.  He  can  not  wisely  care  for 
one  being  or  one  world  without  a  thoughtful  and 
parental  adjustment  of  things  to  the  welfare  of  all 
beings  in  all  worlds. 

The  project  has  been  suggested,  as  one  of  pos- 
sible achievement  in  a  future  age,  of  a  universal 
federation  of  all  human  governments  by  which  all 
nations  should  be  combined  in  one  political  broth- 
erhood, so  that  standing  armies  and  the  arbitra- 
ment of  war  and  retaliatory  policies  should  be 
no  more.  The  bare  thought  of  such  interlocking 
without  interfusion  of  conflicting  interests  op- 
presses a  human  mind  with  a  sense  of  colossal 
intricacy.  Yet  this  is  but  a  remote  suggestion  of 
what  the  universal  government  of  God  must  be 
through  the  intimacies  oT  one  spiritual  family. 


148  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

We  are  apt  to  be  oblivious  of  the  immense  realm 
of  the  unknown  in  the  alliances  of  human  history 
with  that  of  other  orders  of  intelligence.  Take 
the  fall  of  this  world,  for  example.  How  little  we 
know  of  its  remote  and  complicated  relations ! 
What  problems  of  mysterious  import  it  must  have 
started  in  distant  jjlaces  of  creation  !  It  may  have 
sent  a  shock,  for  which  the  fatherly  government 
of  God  must  provide  counteraction,  to  the  remotest 
frontier  of  populated  space.  The  moral  destiny 
of  Sirius  and  Neptune  may  be  bound  up  with  ours. 
It  may  be,  that  the  prevention  of  sin  here  by  the 
only  means  possible  or  wise  under  the  moral  econ- 
omy which  God  has  elected,  would  have  been  a 
work  involving  infinite  impossibilities.  To  our 
angelic  brethren,  it  may  have  seemed  a  perilous 
anomaly. 

Here  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  govern- 
ment of  sin  by  any  other  devices  than  those  of 
free-will  and  restrictive  retribution  is  anomalous  to 
a  loyal  conscience.  Speaking  as  we  should  of  the 
devices  of  human  law,  we  should  pronounce  it 
extra-constitutional.  To  cherubim  and  seraphim 
it  might  have  threatened  incalculable  disaster  to 
adopt  a  policy  which  should  even  have  the  look  of 
tampering  with  the  liberty  of  a  free  being.  The 
history  of  the  nameless  orders  of  intelligence 
which  may  fill  the  unknown  regions  of  space,  may 
have  contained  in  its  archives  no  precedent  for  it. 
It  may  not,  therefore,  have  been  congenial  with  any 
principles  of  moral  government  known  to  them, 


Sin  Under  the  Government  of  God,       149 

and  fixed  in  their  faith.  It  might  have  been  pro- 
ductive of  a  violence  to  the  moral  sense  of  the 
universe  infinitely  more  weighty  in  the  general 
scale  of  evil,  than  to  have  chosen  the  policy  of 
non-interference  in  the  government  of  one  world, 
and  to  have  left  it  to  its  own  chosen  way  of  guilt 
and  desolation. 

It  is  very  true  that  conjectures  like  these  open 
into  a  region  of  shadowy  possibilities.  Positive 
faith  can  not  enter  it  one  step.  We  do  not  know. 
Our  vision  is  very  dim.  In  such  adventurous  re- 
searches we  soon  come  to  the  limit,  even  of  con- 
jecture. We  can  not  affirm,  therefore,  that  one  or 
another  of  these  conjectures  is  true.  But  it^  is 
very  much  to  the  purpose  of  the  present  argument, 
that  they  indicate  our  boundless  ignorance.  This 
they  prove  beyond  conceivable  doubt.  They  block 
up  our  way  solid  with  possibilities  which  we  must 
disprove ;  and  this  is  the  turning-point  of  the  pres- 
ent argument,  —  that  we  must  prove  that  they  are 
not  true,  before  we  can  hold  God's  government  to 
account  as  unjust  or  inhuman  because  He  has  not 
saved  all  His  intelligent  creation  from  the  endless 
penalties  of  endless  guilt.  The  very  measure  of 
our  ignorance  is  the  measure  of  our  reasonable 
faith. 

5.  The  argument  as  thus  far  developed  implies 
one  more  phase  of  it  wliich  is  worthy  of  emphatic 
notice.  We  do  not  know  that  the  prevention  of 
evil  in  tliis  world,  and  of  consequent  retribution  in 
eternity,  is  possible  under  that  feature  of  God's 


150  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

government  by  which  evil  is  overruled,  and  made 
the  instrument  of  good. 

This  is  one  of  the  devices  of  infinite  wisdom, 
which,  like  its  source,  may  be  infinite  in  the  range 
of  its  working.  How  far  it  is  concerned  with  the 
non-prevention  of  moral  evil,  we  do  not  know.  In 
certain  conditions,  it  may  be  prohibitory  of  divine 
interference.  Good  in  this  world  could  not  be 
what  it  is,  but  for  the  evil  which  often  underlies 
it.  Our  sight  into  this  mystery,  too,  is  very  short. 
Our  ignorance  is  very  dense.  But  we  can  not 
help  seeing  that  the  principle  exists.  We  follow 
it  a  little  way,  and  beyond  we  see  that  its  possible 
range  outreaches  all  human  thought.  It  goes  into 
human  history  laden  with  infinite  and  strange  con- 
tingencies. To  all  appearance,  it  has  a  mysterious 
power  of  contradiction.  It  appears  often  to  make 
evil  good.  It  brings  to  pass  good  which  over- 
weighs  a  thousand-fold  the  evil  which  is  used  in 
the  evolution. 

This  law  of  the  greater  good  from  the  lesser 
evil  pervades  the  whole  kingdom  of  nature.  Every 
grain  of  wheat  that  germinates  in  the  soil  illus- 
trates it.  It  expands  with  reduplicated  force  in 
the  sentient  creation.  Physicians  say  that  the 
province  of  pain  in  the  human  system  is  one  of 
benevolent  design.  Life  could  not  long  survive 
without  its  kindly  ministration.  "  Pain,"  said  an 
eminent  German  physiologist,  "is  the  cry  of  the 
nerve  for  healthy  blood."  Like  the  cry  of  infancy, 
it  is  never  without  a  reason.     The  whole  history 


Sin  Under  the  Government  of  God.        151 

of  surgical  science  is  the  history  of  evil  inflicted, 
that  good  might  be  enjoyed. 

On  the  grander  scale  of  social  and  national  life, 
the  same  law  assumes  gigantic  proportions.  What 
do  not  civilization  and  commerce  owe  to  war? 
The  very  ideal  of  manly  character,  —  how  could 
the  world  ever  have  conceived  it,  but  for  the  mili- 
tary virtues  ?  Eliminate  from  poetry  and  art  all 
that  these  virtues  have  contributed,  and  what 
would  be  left  ?  Strike  out  from  the  history  of  na- 
tions all  that  human  suffering  has  done  for  human 
liberty,  and  where  would  the  great  nations  be  to- 
day ?  The  world  over,  and  through  all  time,  good 
from  evil,  pleasure  from  pain,  fruit  from  rotten- 
ness, growth  from  deca} ,  strength  from  weakness, 
life  from  death,  is  the  law  of  being.  Enumerate 
the  whole  vocabulary  of  evil  by  wdiich  language 
expresses  its  varieties,  and  do  you  not  find  that 
every  one  has  its  opposite  in  the  vocabulary  of 
good,  to  which  it  is  often  tributary  ? 

Pass  over  the  line  into  the  kingdom  of  grace. 
You  find  the  same  law  there,  in  more  magnificent 
working.  God  is  never  cheated  of  His  purpose 
by  the  audacity  of  sin.  Wicked  men  never  get 
beyond  the  reach  of  His  uses.  They  think  not  so, 
neither  is  it  in  their  hearts.  Unconsciously  they 
serve  His  will  in  the  very  act  of  refusing.  Demon- 
ized  being  never  escapes  from  the  hollow  of  His 
hand.  He  uses  sin  as  grandly  as  an  earthquake, 
and  as  easily  as  a  violet.  The  vices  of  men  are 
His  instruments,  though  they  be  a  flaming  fire. 


152  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

Tyrants  create  heroes ;  inquisitors,  martyrs ;  devils, 
saints.  At  the  foot  of  the  cross,  do  we  not  stand 
dumb  before  the  treachery  of  Judas  ?  It  were 
good  for  that  man  if  he  had  never  been  born,  — 
but  what  of  the  good  of  other  men?  It  might 
have  been  good  for  this  world  if  it  had  never  been, 
—  but  what  of  its  mission  to  other  worlds  ?  The 
whole  heavens  were  darkened  at  the  crucifixion, 
— but,  without  that  event,  what  were  the  history 
of  the  universe  ? 

We  have  reason  to  believe,  therefore,  that  this 
law  of  the  greater  good  from  the  lesser  evil  may 
enter  into  the  reasons  prevailing  in  the  mind  of 
God  for  the  non-prevention  of  sin.  We  know  not 
how  far,  nor  to  what  magnitude  of  results.  But 
we  see  so  much  as  this,  —  that  the  usefulness  of 
evil,  as  God  rules  and  overrules  it,  is  as  legitimate 
as  that  of  any  other  instrument  of  God's  decrees. 
Its  being  evil  does  not  forbid  its  use  :  the  enormity 
of  the  evil  does  not  seem  to  limit  its  use.  If  any 
law  governs  its  instrumental  value,  it  is,  that  the 
greater  the  evil,  the  more  immense  is  the  good 
extorted  from  its  existence.  The  power  and  the 
wisdom  of  God  for  ever  overreach  and  outweigh 
the  force  and  the  cunning  of  him  who  defies  them. 
The  wrath  of  man  praises  Him. 

It  is  true  that  this  principle  is  a  two-edged 
sword.  We  can  not  wield  it  but  with  reverent 
and  tremulous  hands.  But  all  great  principles 
are  two-edged  swords.  This  one  warns  us  off 
from  forbidden  ground.     It  forbids  us  to  accuse 


Sin  Under  the  Government  of  God.       153 

God's  wisdom  or  benevolence  of  wrong  in  not 
saving  all  His  intelligent  creation  from  the  catas- 
trophe of  sin  and  the  doom  of  retribution.  It 
may  be  that  He  can  not  do  it  without  a  sacrifice 
of  the  greater  good  to  the  lesser  evil.  The  uni- 
verse might  be  shorn  of  half  its  glory  as  a  monu- 
ment of  God's  character,  if  the  principle  of  evolving 
good  from  evil  were  eliminated  from  its  adminis- 
tion. 

Again, — we  concede  it,  —  we  can  not  affirm 
that  these  tilings  are  so.  Our  ignorance  grows 
more  dense  as  we  penetrate  farther  into  these  con- 
jectural researches.  Does  the  objector  urge  that 
we  knoiv  nothing  about  such  themes  of  inquiry? 
We  answer,  "  Very  true ;  and  we  affirm  nothing." 
But  the  very  pivot  of  the  argument  is,  that,  because 
we  know  nothing,  we  must  not  affirm  the  negative 
of  God's  integrity.  We  must  prove  that  certahi 
possibilities  are  not  true,  before  we  can  venture 
to  distrust  either  the  revelations  or  the  silences 
of  God.  Distrust,  under  such  conditions,  is  as 
unphilosophical  as  it  is  ungodly. 


xni. 

THE  HYPOTHESIS  OF  A  SECOND  PROBATION. 

The  theory  of  a  continued  probation  after  death 
is  entitled  to  a  respectful  hearing.  Those  who  are 
learned  in  the  history  of  doctrine  affirm  that  this 
theory  has  never  received  the  exhaustive  discussion 
which  has  been  given  to  other  fundamental  doc- 
trines in  the  evolution  of  the  faith  of  the  Church. 
If  so,  it  should  receive  such  discussion  now.  Those 
who  advocate  it  are  entitled  to  our  gratitude  rather 
than  our  suspicion,  so  far  as  they  have  new  truth, 
or  new  interpretations  of  old  truth,  to  add  to  our 
beliefs. 

Especially  should  we  welcome  any  new  light 
which  may  dawn  upon  the  fearful  problem  of  end- 
less retribution.  Fearful  it  is  to  the  wisest  of  us. 
Unwavering  as  our  faith  is,  we  confess  that  it  is 
an  expectant  faith,  in  which  we  wait  for  more 
light.  We  do  not  understand  the  mystery.  We 
are  dumb  before  its  appalling  darkness.  We  give 
the  hand  of  welcome  to  any  one  who  can  help  us 
to  the  light  we  crave.  If  the  prospect  of  another 
probation,  under  conditions  more  favorable  than 
those  of  this  world,  is  the  way  out  of  the  admitted 
difficulties,  be  it  so,  if  it  can  but  be  proved  as  a 

154 


The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Probation.     .15^ 

revealed,  indubitable  fact.  It  is  but  fair  to  sus- 
pend the  ancient  faith  so  far  as  may  be  needful  to 
give  to  this  new  hypothesis  a  candid  hearing.  No 
authority  of  the  ancient  creeds  should  close  the 
door  upon  progressive  inquiry. 

But,  as  the  process  of  discussion  goes  on,  we 
need  to  be  watchful  of  its  bearings  on  the  popular 
belief.  Re-adjustments  of  old  beliefs  are  neces- 
sarily subject  to  perilous  contingencies.  In  the 
present  case,  belief  is  founded  on  revelation.  A 
revelation  from  God  must  be  assumed  to  be  a  gift 
to  the  popular  mind.  It  is  not  a  monopoly  of 
schoolmen.  The  chief  claim  of  the  Bible  to  supe- 
riority over  the  philosophy  of  Plato  is,  that  it  is 
level,  in  its  great  central  ideas,  to  popular  compre- 
hension. It  is  intended  to  meet  popular  wants. 
If  a  truth  is  in  it,  the  common  mind  can  find  it 
there.  It  has  no  contrasts  of  esoteric  and  exoteric 
dogmas.     What  it  reveals  to  one,  it  reveals  to  all. 

A  strong  presumption,  therefore,  is  created 
against  a  proposed  interpretation,  if  any  one  of 
several  contingencies  appears.  If  that  interpreta- 
tion can  not  be  understood  by  the  common  mind ; 
if  it  does  not  commend  itself  to  the  common  sense  ; 
if  it  does  not  meet  the  religious  necessities  of  com- 
mon life ;  if  it  is  of  such  a  nature  as  to  pervert  the 
workings,  or  lower  the  tone,  of  the  common  con- 
science ;  if,  therefore,  the  practical  drift  of  it  is 
laxative  rather  than  tonic  in  its  effect  on  the 
solicitudes  of  men  respecting  their  eternal  destiny ; 
if  all  or  any  of  these  conditions  accompany  a  pro- 


156  My  Study :  and  Other  Ussays. 

posed  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures,  —  a  strong 
presumj)tion  is  thereby  created  that  it  is  not  true. 
This  presumj)tive  argument  appears  to  be  unan- 
swerable against  the  hypothesis  of  a  continued 
probation  after  death. 

In  the  first  place,  the  fact  should  be  emphasized, 
that  the  popular  mind  will  make  no  practical  dis- 
tinction between  a  continued  probation  and  a  second 
probation.  The  distinction  is  a  real  one,  and  the 
advocates  of  the  hypothesis  are  fairly  entitled  to 
all  that  can  be  made  of  it.  Among  experts  in 
theological  debate,  it  is  not  fair  to  ignore  it.  But 
it  is  equally  true  and  equally  important,  if  not 
more  so,  that  the  popular  mind  ivill  ignore  it  in  its 
practical  use  of  the  doctrine.  No  caution  of  reli- 
gious teachers  can  prevent  this.  The  pulpit  is 
powerless  to  neutralize  it.  Ages  of  settled  belief 
have  fixed  in  the  popular  theology  the  end  of  life 
as  synchronous  with  the  end  of  moral  trial.  All 
that  lies  beyond  is  a  new  existence.  Death  is  the 
most  absolute  finality  we  knovv^  of.  No  other  revo- 
lution conceivable  in  moral  conditions  can  break 
the  continuity  of  probation  so  radically  and  sum- 
marily. It  impresses  all  minds,  not  prepossessed 
by  an  adverse  theory,  as  the  natural  ending  of  tliis 
period  of  trial.  If  it  is  not  such,  that  fact  creates 
an  anomaly  in  the  divine  order  of  things.  Death 
puts  an  end  to  all  other  preliminaries  to  fixed 
destiny.  The  end  is  so  absolute  as  to  start  pain- 
fully the  inquiry  whether  the  soul  itself  exists  in 
the  region  beyond.     Why,  then,  should  it  not  put 


The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Prohation,     157 

an  end  to  this  preliminary,  —  the  moral  trial  for 
eternity  ? 

Practically,  therefore,  to  the  popular  mind,  the 
question  concerns  a  second  period  of  probationary 
disciplme.  One  such  period  ends :  does  another 
begin?  In  this  phase  of  it,  we  must  meet  the 
question  in  the  pulpit.  In  scholastic  discussion, 
it  may  take  the  other  form,  and  ought  to  be  so 
treated ;  but  the  pulpit  must  encounter  it  as  it 
frames  itself  in  the  popular  thought.  We  shall 
not,  for  any  long  time,  hold  the  popular  thought 
to  any  other.  Discuss  a  continued  probation  in  a 
morning's  sermon,  and  hearers  will  be  talking  of 
a  second  probation  before  nightfall. 

A  more  serious  peculiarity  of  the  discussion, 
and  one  tending  to  relax  the  popular  faith,  is  the 
hypothetical  way  in  which  the  advocates  of  the  new 
departure  deny  the  ancient  belief  that  the  end  of 
probation  and  the  end  of  life  are  simultaneous. 
"7/,"  we  are  told,  "there  are  beings  —  infants, 
idiots,  and  some  heathen  —  who  have  no  fair  trial 
in  this  life,  they  will  not  be  denied  such  trial  in 
another.  If  this  world  gives  them  no  fair  chance 
of  salvation,  another  world  will.  If  they  have  not 
known  and  intelligently  rejected  Christ  here,  they 
will  not  be  debarred  from  the  opportunity  else- 
where. Beyond  the  grave,  in  Hades,  in  Paradise, 
in  some  city  of  refuge,  in  some  prison  of  suspended 
destiny,  such  infirm  souls,  if  they  exist,  shall  find 
the  gospel  preached,  and  salvation  offered."  The 
corollary  follows  inevitably,  that  prayer  for  such 


158  My  Study:  mid  Other  Essays. 

"  spirits  in  prison  "  is  not  forbidden.  Tacitly  it  is 
encouraged. 

We  pass  OA^er,  for  the  present,  the  startling 
revolution  which  this  novel  theology  proposes  in 
the  ancient  theory,  so  dear  to  bereaved  parents, 
of  the  destiny  of  those  who  die  in  infancy.  The 
j)oint  which  demands  review,  is  that  this  hypo- 
thetical way  of  holding  in  suspense  the  ancient 
faith  is  fraught  with  peril.  To  a  scholarly  mind, 
in  matters  which  are  proper  themes  of  scholastic 
debate,  a  hypothesis  may  be  a  very  harmless  thing. 
It  may  be  a  very  necessary  device  in  the  initial 
stage  of  discussion.  It  is  not  such  to  the  common 
mind,  in  matters  of  grave  practical  faith.  Minds 
unused  to  speculative  theology  may  find  it  difficult 
to  deny  a  hypothesis  so  plausible  as  the  one  now  in 
hand.  They  may  not  easily  see  where  the  fallacy 
lies.  If  two  and  two  do  not  make  four,  they  may 
make  five.  Why  not  ?  Yet  the  hypothesis  loosens 
the  whole  basis  of  mathematical  demonstration. 
So,  in  the  case  now  before  us,  the  fallacy  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  hypothesis  contradicts  known 
and  indubitable  truth.  It  loosens  the  foundation 
of  much  more  than  the  truth  in  question. 

Apply  the  hypothetical  method  to  truths  not 
susceptible  of  demonstration,  and  to  the  common 
mind  it  may  be  revolutionary  in  its  effect.  It  is 
likely  to  carry  the  force  of  assertion.  Popular 
thinking  does  not  hold  truth  long  in  solution.  A 
precipitate  is  soon  formed  of  positive  belief  or  un- 
belief.    Discourse  in  the   hypothetical  vein  will 


The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Probation.     159 

soon  be  believed  to  affirm  more  than  it  does  affirm. 
We  shall  be  understood  to  deny  more  than  we  do 
deny.  When  confronted  with  the  perils  of  our 
teaching,  we  may  honestly  shelter  ourselves  behind 
our  hypotheses.  Logically  they  protect  us  from 
the  charge  of  error,  because  they  affirm  nothing. 
But  the  popular  mind  does  not  follow  us  to  our 
retreat.  We  shall  be  quoted  as  holding  a  secret 
faith.  That  which  we  hold  suspended  on  an  "  if," 
the  common  mind  will  hold  in  downright  affirma- 
tion. The  common  sense  of  men  is  not  diplomatic. 
It  does  not  hold  beliefs  in  reserve  or  in  balance 
with  provisos.  It  does  not  handle  truth  with 
silken  gloves. 

Furthermore,  on  the  subject  of  retribution  the 
popular  faith  is  quick  to  seek  shelter  from  the 
terrific  forms  of  inspired  speech.  If  a  chance  is 
opened  for  escape  from  the  old  belief  with  a  re- 
spectable show  of  scholarly  authority,  men  spring 
to  it.  In  the  biblical  forms  we  utter  our  faith  in 
low  and  tremulous  tones.  It  requires  but  a  little 
impulse  of  doubt  from  trusted  religious  teachers, 
first  to  remand  our  belief  into  silence,  and  then  to 
substitute  for  it  more  than  the  hypothetical  nega- 
tion. Men  will  deny  on  this  theme  more  than 
their  teachers  deny :  they  will  believe  on  the  nega- 
tive side  more  than  their  teachers  believe.  Such 
is  the  drift  of  the  popular  thinking.  The  descent 
from  an  old,  high-toned,  outspoken,  uncompromis- 
ing type  of  the  truth  to  a  practical  suspension, 
ending  in  a  flat  denial,  is  very  facile.     The  road  is 


160  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

very  smooth,  made  so  by  the  tread  of  many  feet. 
It  needs  often  but  the  suggestion  from  a  revered 
instructor  of  the  hypothetical  negative  to  invite 
the  unwary  to  a  surrender  of  faith. 

In  few  things  is  the  superlative  wisdom  of 
inspiration,  and  especially  that  of  our  Lord,  more 
obvious  than  in  the  unmitigated,  peremptory,  ab- 
solute revelation  of  eternal  woe.  In  nothing  does 
inspiration  disclose  more  strildngly  its  prospective 
bearing  in  looking  onward  to  after-times,  and  fore- 
stalling objections  created  by  the  effeminate  senti- 
ment of  ages  to  come.  The  revelation  of  retribu- 
tive purposes  from  the  lips  of  our  Lord  is  the  divine 
ultimatum.  In  His  imperative  speech,  the  truth  is 
relieved  by  no  hypothesis  to  the  contrary.  It  is 
diluted  by  no  hint  of  exceptions.  The  eternal 
prospect  is  lighted  up  by  no  possibilities  of  re- 
prieve. Compromise  and  proviso  are  forestalled. 
The  great  gulf  is  fixed.  The  uttermost  farthing 
shall  be  exacted.  This  is  preaching  great  truth  in 
great  speech.  No  other  way  of  putting  the  stern 
reality  will  ever  hold  the  popular  mind  to  it  as  a 
reality.  Eelax  its  severity,  and  you  destroy  its 
tenacity.  Give  men  the  inch,  and  they  will  take 
the  ell.  Make  the  error  possible,  and  they  will 
make  it  sure.  Hypothesis  will  be  assertion,  and 
plausibility  will  be  proof. 

Probably  not  an  ungodly  man  lives  who  does 
not  believe,  that,  if  there  are  to  be  any  exceptions 
to  the  doom  of  incorrigible  guilt,  his  own  case  will 
be  one  of  them.     Men  trust  to  luck  in  this  thing 


The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Prohation.     161 

with  awful  temerity.  Tliey  find  some  overbear- 
ing of  temj)tation,  some  infelicity  of  circumstance, 
some  force  of  ancestral  impulse,  some  tyranny 
of  temperament,  which  will  create,  if  not  in  eter- 
nal justice,  yet  in  the  magnanimity  of  God,  a  way 
for  their  escape  from  the  threatened  penalty  of 
sin.  In  some  way  or  other  the  elastic  "  If "  can 
be  made  to  cover  a  fair  chance  of  salvation  for 
them,  whatever  may  be  the  luck  of  worse  men. 

Such  is  the  pagan  theology  on  the  subject  which 
finds  currency  in  the  world.  Indeed,  is  it  not  the 
fact,  that,  to  the  majority  of  us  all,  crimes  are  worse 
in  other  men  than  in  ourselves  ?  Few  men  weigh 
themselves  with  their  fellows  in  even  scales.  Do 
we  not  count  it  an  exceptional  virtue  if  a  man  is 
as  severe  in  self-judgment  as  in  the  criticism  of 
others?  A  subtile  breath  generally  tilts  the  bal- 
ance in  our  favor.  Here,  therefore,  lies  imminent 
and  deadly  peril  in  the  preaching  of  hypothetical 
faith  on  a  truth  so  appalling  to  the  sensibilities, 
and  so  overpowering  to  the  self-love,  of  men,  as 
that  of  an  eternal  Hell. 

We  may  perhaps  obtain  some  conception  of  this 
perilous  tendency  by  extending  this  hypothetical 
stjde  of  teaching  to  others  of  the  central  doctrines 
and  duties  of  our  religion.  Why  not,  as  perti- 
nently as  to  this  one  ?  Express  in  this  style  the 
doctrine  of  depravity.  If  there  are  beings,  such 
as  infants,  idiots,  and  some  heathen,  who,  by  reason 
of  constitutional  infirmity  or  unfortunate  condi- 
tions, are   not  susceptible  of  moral   government, 


162  My  Study:  mid  Other  Essays. 

such  as  Cliristianity  represents,  then  the  govern- 
ment of  God  may  not  cover  them  at  all  in  the 
range  of  its  requirements  and  sanctions.  If  there 
are  men,  women,  children,  who,  by  reason  of  their 
amiability  of  temperament  or  the  innocence  of 
youth,  are  not  subject  to  the  disabilities  of  the 
Fall,  then  the  law  of  God  does  not  rest  upon  them 
as  being  in  the  bondage  of  sin.  The  Word  of  God 
does  not  admonish  them  as  lost  beings  who  need 
to  be  saved.  At  least  this  may  be  true.  We 
"  must  not  dogmatize  "  to  the  contrary. 

Apply  this  dubious  method  of  speech  to  the  doc- 
t]'ine  of  regeneration.  If  there  are  men  of  cul- 
ture, and  women  of  refinement,  and  children  of  a 
godly  ancestry ;  and  if  to  these  are  to  be  added 
scholars,  philosophers,  scientists,  statesmen,  whom 
a  Christian  civilization  has  elevated  and  rounded 
in  the  virtues  and  amenities  of  life,  so  that  their 
moral  deficiencies  seem  insignificant,  their  faults 
venial,  their  sIds  invisible  to  the  world's  eye, — then 
they  do  not,  or  may  not,  stand  in  need  of  moral 
renewal  by  supernatural  power.  If  there  are  some 
such  elect  spirits  among  hearers  of  the  gospel,  the 
Christian  pulpit  can  not  fairly  treat  them  as  dead 
in  trespasses  and  sins.  They  can  not  reasonably 
be  counted  as  habitants  of  a  lost  world,  by  nature 
the  children  of  wrath,  and  needing  to  be  born 
again.  They  constitute,  as  many  such  believe  of 
themselves,  an  intermediate  class  between  saints 
and  sinners,  of  whom  the  drift  of  biblical  teaching 
seems  to  take  no  cognizance.     At  the  best,  this 


The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Probation.     163 

may  be  so.  We  must  submit  to  a  suspense  of 
faith  till  we  can  prove  that  it  is  not  so.  Preach- 
ing on  this  doctrine,  instead  of  presenting  a  solid 
front  as  the  ages  of  faith  have  believed,  must  be 
riven  through  and  through  by  its  exceptions. 

Subject  to  the  same  strain  of  hypothesis  the 
doctrine  of  the  Atonement.  If  there  are  favored 
classes  of  the  human  brotherhood,  in  which  sin 
itself  takes  on  aspiring  and  beautiful  and  heroic 
forms,  so  that  they  become  the  theme  of  eulogium 
and  song,  which  carry  the  implication  that  sin  in 
such  forms  does  not  need  to  be  washed  away  by 
the  atoning  blood  of  Clu'ist,  then  it  follows  that 
of  such  beings  Christ  is  not  a  Saviour.  If  there 
are  such  men  and  women,  the  corollary  is,  that 
they  do  not  depend  on  the  sacrifice  of  an  infinite 
and  sinless  One  to  shield  them  from  the  wrath 
of  an  indignant  God.  Such  elect  ones  are  not 
required  to  look  upon  themselves  as  saved  by 
grace,  and  grace  only. 

An  English  nobleman  once  said,  that  to  him  the 
most  incredible  thing  in  Christianity  was,  that,  in 
the  conditions  of  salvation,  it  makes  no  distinction 
between  the  noble  and  the  base  of  human  birth. 
Napoleon  spoke  in  the  same  strain.  Said  he,  "  For 
my  part,  it  is  not  the  mystery  of  the  incarnation 
which  I  discover  in  religion,  but  the  mystery  of 
social  order  which  associates  with  heaven  the  idea 
of  equality."  How  can  the  hypothetical  theology 
answer  him  ?  It  must  at  least  be  conceded  that 
his  objection  may  be  unanswerable.     It  will  not 


164  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

do  for  us  to  affirm  that  it  is  not  so.  "  We  must 
not  dogmatize."  Hypothetical  wisdom  sets  all 
tilings  sailing  in  a  beautiful  mist  in  mid  air. 

Carry  this  style  of  hypothetical  negation  into 
the  discussion  of  inspiration.  How  does  it  sound 
from  a  Christian  pulpit?  Moses,  though  lifted 
above  his  age  in  his  religious  intuitions,  was  still 
a  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews.  When  he,  honestly 
perhaps,  read  prophecy  backward,  and  experi- 
mented upon  the  age  of  the  world  and  the  order 
of  its  birth,  if  he  took  Hebrew  legend  for  revela- 
tion, and  was  sadly  out  in  his  reckoning;  if  he 
really  knew  no  more  about  it  than  other  men  who 
had  dreams,  and  saw  strange  sights;  and  zf  science 
convicts  him  of  that  ignorance  and  presumption,  — 
then  we  must  roll  up  the  parchment  of  Genesis, 
and  store  it  in  the  library  of  myths.  Our  respect 
for  Mosaic  inspiration  must  keep  it  company. 

St.  Paul  believed,  honestly  enough,  that  it  was 
given  him  to  see  things  which  it  was  not  lawful 
for  man  to  utter.  Yet  he  was  a  Jew.  He  dragged 
behind  him  the  crudities  of  a  race  to  whom  sci- 
ence was  unknown,  and  in  whose  ethics  art  was  a 
sin.  If  therefore,  he  at  one  time  believed  in  good 
faith  that  he  saw  the  end  of  the  world  close  at 
hand,  and  said  it,  and  if  a  month  or  two  later  he 
declared  in  faith  not  so  good  that  he  never  said 
that,  we  must,  then,  treat  him  as  we  would  any 
other  blundering  prophet,  in  whose  reckoning  the 
end  of  the  world  has  not  come  to  time.  His 
claim  to   inspii-ed   authority  must  pass  for  what 


The  fff/pothesis  of  a  Second  Probation,     165 

it  is  worth.  The  popular  mind  will  make  quick 
work  with  it. 

Jff^  an  inspired  Psalmist  uttered  very  worldly 
imprecations ;  if  he  cursed  his  enemies  roundly, 
like  other  exasperated  men  j  if  inspired  lawgivers 
commanded  things  abhorrent  to  the  moral  sense 
of  mankind;  if  even  our  blessed  Lord  pictured 
retribution  in  panoramic  horrors,  which  our  ethi- 
cal instincts  recoil  from  as  contradictory  to  the 
character  of  God, — then  we  must  let  go  the  record 
of  psalmist  and  lawgiver  and  of  the  most  godlike 
of  teachers.  We  must  hold  our  notions  of  inspira- 
tion with  so  loose  a  hand,  that  our  own  reason 
shall  at  least  be  its  equal,  and  our  moral  intuitions 
vastly  its  superior.  In  the  ultimate  evolution  of 
the  argument,  we  must  at  least  concede  that  this 
mat/  be  true.  "  It  will  not  do  for  us  to  dogmatize  " 
to  the  contrary. 

Once  more  apply  this  style  of  hypothesis  and 
possible  negation  to  the  adjustments  of  the  pulpit 
and  the  revision  of  creeds,  if  Christianity  itself 
uplifts  some  portions  of  the  race,  possibly  some 
entire  generation  in  a  golden  age,  to  such  a  height 
that  culture  does  for  them  what  grace,  and  grace 
only,  can  do  for  others,  then  these  select  ones  do 
not,  or  mai/  not,  —  we  do  not  know,  and  dogma- 
tizing is  out  of  place,  —  ma^  not  be  proper  objects 
of  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  in  its  ancient  types. 
It  must  be  reconstructed  to  meet  their  advanced 
thinking.  It  must  be  mellowed  to  suit  their  deli- 
cate sensibilities.     They  must  not  be   disgusted 


166  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

by  its  ancient  horrors.  The  sterner  elements  of  it 
must  be  eliminated.  The  poet  was  right  who 
sang  of  a  place  which  "  must  not  be  named  to  ears 
polite."  The  old  creeds  must  be  woven  anew  of 
more  facile  stuff.  Love  must  take  the  precedence 
of  Law.  Silk  must  take  the  place  of  steel.  The 
pulpit  of  the  coming  age  must  be  attuned 

"  To  the  Dorian  mood 
Of  flutes  and  soft  recorders." 

Even  now  the  new  dispensation  may  be  at  the 
door :  who  can  tell  ? 

Ring  the  changes  of  these  hypothetical  nega- 
tions through  the  whole  gamut  of  revealed  truth, 
and  what  must  be  the  working  upon  the  whole 
tone  of  the  pulpit  ?  How  long  could  the  popular 
faith  stand  that  style  of  doctrinal  discussion? 
How  long  could  any  tiling  stand  in  the  popular 
theology  which  could  deserve  a  biblical  nomen- 
clature ?  How  long  could  the  faith  of  the  wisest 
and  the  best  of  us  bear  the  strain  ?  A  man's  real 
faith  is  the  residue  which  his  doubts  leave  intact. 
Hypothetical  beliefs  are  beliefs  suspended.  Life 
can  not  use  them  as  factors  in  achievement.  Char- 
acter can  not  appropriate  them  as  elements  of 
growth.  In  war,  no  territory  is  so  severely  rav- 
aged as  the  neutral  ground.  So  is  it  with  beliefs 
which  are  made  the  pendants  of  an  "  If." 

Why  should  the  doctrine  of  retribution  be  sub- 
jected to  such  neutrality  more  than  the  cognate 
doctrines  of  our  religion?     No  other  element  in 


The  Hypothesis  of  a  Second  Probation.     167 

our  system  of  faith  bears  tampering  with  so  poorly 
as  this.  The  popular  mind  must  hold  it  with  close 
grip,  or  it  can  not  long  hold  it  at  all.  It  never 
can  live  subject  to  the  law  of  chances.  Men  must 
hear  in  it  the  old  apostolic  ring  of  unquestioning 
and  unqualified  speech.  Only  when  we  ''''know 
the  terrors  of  the  Lord,"  can  we  "persuade  men." 
One  fact  more  is  conclusive  evidence  of  the 
peril  of  this  way  of  putting  things  in  our  exposi- 
tions of  the  ancient  faith.  It  is,  that  its  hereditary 
enemies  exult  in  this  novel  departure.  General 
Grant  said  of  the  battles  of  the  Wilderness, 
"  Where  the  enemy  does  not  want  me,  there  they 
must  find  me."  The  converse  principle  is  perti- 
nent in  theological  controversy.  That  is  perilous 
to  the  faith  which  its  enemies  delight  in.  We  can 
not  afford  to  preach  it  in  ways  which  are  a  boon 
to  unbelief.  We  should  be  wary  of  qualifications 
and  provisos  which  are  welcomed  by  the  whole  un- 
believing world.  Yet  when  in  the  history  of  the 
New-England  Theology  has  such  a  greeting  been 
given  with  such  loud  and  general  acclaim  by  its 
opponents  as  that  which  has  applauded  this  hypo- 
thetical teaching  of  a  second  probation?  The 
theological  successors  of  Dr.  Channing  have  joined 
hands  with  those  of  Dr.  Ballou  and  of  Theodore 
Parker  in  a  triangular  benediction  upon  the  dis- 
coverers of  this  new  theory  of  the  future  life.  It 
is  hailed  by  them  all  as  a  sign  that  the  last  days 
of  the  faith  of  the  fathers  are  at  hand.  A  wise 
man  will  watch  what  his  enemies  say  of  him. 


168  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

Mr.  Emerson  admits  that  the  Calvinistic  theol- 
ogy —  mythology,  he  calls  it  —  has  great  tenacity 
of  life.  He  says  it  will  be  the  last  to  die  of  the 
ancient  beliefs.  So  it  will.  But  we  have  only  to 
put  its  massive  pillars  into  the  stock  and  structure 
of  hypotheses,  to  see  them  topple  over  before  their 
time.  Errors  develop  themselves  in  systems  as 
truths  do.  As  one  truth  ushers  another  into  the 
general  faith,  so  does  one  error  lead  to  a  system  of 
errors  in  which  each  one  is  a  prop  to  the  rest. 
One  error  never  stands  long  alone.  Especially  in 
the  derivation  of  beliefs  from  a  divine  revelation, 
to  extort  an  error  from  it  requires  a  theory  of 
inspiration  which  undermines  the  whole.  This  is 
the  result  to  be  feared  by  the  friends,  and  this  is  the 
result  hoped  for  by  the  enemies,  of  our  faith.  The 
disintegrating  process  may  be  very  rapid.  An 
innocent  hypothesis  may  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye  be  the  ruin  of  a  system. 


XIV. 
SCHOLASTIC  THEORIES  OF  INSPIRATION. 

OuES  is  the  religion  of  a  Book.  The  inspira- 
tion of  the  Book  is,  therefore,  to  the  popular  faith 
especially,  a  necessity.  No  other  Christian  truth 
reaches  so  far  underground.  Yet  the  drift  of 
what  may  be  called  scholastic  as  distinct  from 
popular  opinion  concerning  it,  in  recent  years,  has 
tended  strongly  to  take  the  doctrine  out  of  the 
range  open  to  popular  inquiry,  and  to  remand  it  to 
speculations  in  which  only  cultured  minds,  and 
to  some  extent  only  professional  minds,  are  inter- 
ested. In  some  quarters,  the  result  is  a  change 
amounting  almost  to  revolution.  What,  then,  do 
we  need  to  find  m  the  doctrine  of  Inspiration  to 
make  it  effective  in  the  theology  of  the  people  ? 

First,  We  need  a  theory  of  inspiration  which  is 
easily  understood.  A  theory  packed  full  of  criti- 
cal distinctions  and  of  qualifications  not  easily 
intelligible,  except  to  educated  minds,  is  not  the 
theory  needed  by  the  common  mind.  It  will  not 
long  hold  the  common  mind.  It  is  not  a  practi- 
cable theory,  therefore,  for  the  uses  of  the  pulpit. 
All  Christian  history  shows  that  the  masses  of  a 
Christianized  nation  must  have  the  idea  of  inspira- 

169 


170  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

tion,  if  at  all,  in  clear  forms  of  statement,  and 
supported  by  obvious  methods  of  proof.  With 
the  people,  inspiration  is  that  or  nothing.  The 
moment  that  you  involve  the  doctrine  in  intricate 
forms,  or  obscure  its  proof  by  wary  reserve  in 
argument  which  suggests  more  doubt  than  faith, 
or  suspend  its  integrity  on  nice  points  of  criticism 
which  invite  interminable  conflicts  of  learning, 
you  take  it  out  of  the  range  of  the  moral  sym- 
pathies of  the  people.  It  slips  out  of  keeping 
with  their  sense  of  moral  need.  They  no  longer 
see  in  it  a  truth  which  fits  in  to  their  condition. 
Men  of  the  common  mold  will  say  of  such  an 
involuted  and  nicely  balanced  theory,  "  That  may 
do  for  men  of  learning,  but  it  contains  no  help 
for  me."  Human  nature  in  tlie  average  craves 
another  vision. 

We  need,  also,  in  a  working  theory  of  inspira- 
tion, something  which  makes  the  authority  of  the 
Scriptures  iraj)erative.  We  must  have  the  doc- 
trine in  a  bold  and  decisive  form.  Plain  men  must 
be  able  to  carry  it  from  the  pulpit  to  their  homes, 
and  trust  it  with  a  sense  of  assurance  in  their 
devotional  reading  of  their  Bibles.  On  such  a 
subject,  men  will  not  long  believe  a  doctrine  which 
they  can  not  use.  Indeed,  it  is  suspiciously  notice- 
able, that  even  experts  in  biblical  learning  are 
sometimes  burdened  with  learning  overmuch  on 
the  subject.  They  are  apt  to  flounder  when  they 
attempt  to  define  a  very  "  liberal "  and  scholastic 
notion  of  inspiration  in  few  words.     They  seem 


Scholastic  Theories  of  Inspiration.         171 

to  be  tongue-tied  by  fear  of  believing  too  much. 
One  modern  expert  of  this  class  declares  that  such 
are  the  complications  and  qualifications  of  the  doc- 
trine, that  it  can  not  be  truthfully  stated  in  exact 
language.  That  is  a  disastrous  concession  to 
infidelity. 

The  late  Rev.  Starr  King,  D.D.,  of  Boston,  once 
illustrated,  in  his  own  person,  the  same  peril.  He 
had  just  preached  a  sermon  on  the  doctrine,  which 
was  eminent  for  almost  every  quality  of  scholarly 
discourse  except  those  of  clear  statement  and  posi- 
tive faith.  Among  his  hearers  was  his  neighbor 
and  friend,  the  late  Rev.  Nehemiah  Adams,  D.D. 
As  they  left  the  church,  arm  in  arm.  Dr.  Adams 
said  to  him,  in  substance,  "  Dr.  King,  your  sermon 
leaves  me  in  doubt  as  to  what  you  mean  when  you 
call  the  Bible  inspired.  Will  you  explain  to  me 
wha':  3'our  idea  of  inspiration  is  ?  "  —  "  Yes,"  said 
Dr.  King  substantially :  "  I  think  I  have  a  satis- 
factory notion  of  it,  and  it  is  just  this :  inspiration 
is  —  it  is  —  hm  !  —  it  is  a  kind  of  mental  uplifting ; 
it  is  an  illumination ;  it  is  —  well,  it  is  an  ifispiror 
tion  of  the  whole  man." 

This  may  do  for  minds  like  that  of  Dr.  King ; 
but  it  will  never  do  for  the  plain  Christian  believer, 
who  feels  the  need  of  a  revelation  from  God  which 
is  authoritatively  God-like.  Plain  men,  when  in 
earnest  in  religious  inquiry,  incline  to  believe 
much  rather  than  little.  They  are,  by  stress  of 
their  necessities,  believers,  not  doubters.  They 
need  a  conception  of  inspiration  which  shall  make 


172  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

the  Bible  resonant  with  the  very  voice  of  God.  It 
must  be  something  which  the  soul  can  hear  in  the 
far  distance,  when  conscious  of  estrangement  from 
its  Maker.  It  must  give  visions  of  truth  wliich 
men  can  see  in  the  dark.  Nothing  less  authorita- 
tive than  this  is  the  inspiration  needed  to  commend 
the  religion  of  a  Book  to  a  lost  world.  Lost  men 
need  a  voice  which  can  find  them. 

A  fact  supremely  vital  to  the  doctrine  in  ques- 
tion is  that  proof  of  any  revelation  must  start  with 
the  inquiry,  "Does  man  need  a  revelation?"  If 
we  need  none,  the  presumption  is  that  we  have 
none.  This  presumption  is  irrefutable  by  any 
ulterior  reasoning.  God  is  not  a  God  of  waste. 
Even  Socrates  grounded  his  belief  that  a  teacher 
must  conib  f^om  God,  on  the  simple  fact  that  the 
world  was  in  so  l:"'d  a  plight  without  one.  Does 
it  not  plainly  follow,  Lli^t  the  theory  of  inspira- 
tion here  combated  knocks  out  from  under  it  the 
initial  argument  in  proof  of  any  revelation  ?  For 
the  only  revelation  it  supports  is  not  the  revela- 
tion we  need.  We  need  an  authority.  We  need 
an  obvious  authority,  an  imperial  authority,  an 
authority  from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  We 
need  a  clear  light  shining  in  a  dark  place.  We 
need  something  which  shall  illumine  blinded  eyes, 
and  be  audible  to  deafened  ears.  A  revelation 
which  in  the  very  groundwork  of  its  claims  multi- 
plies our  questionings,  and  reduplicates  our  doubts, 
is  7iot  the  revelation  we  need.  Therefore  the  pre- 
sumption is  conclusive,  that  it  is  not  the  revelation 
we  have  received. 


Scholastic  Theories  of  Inspiration.         173 

Another  element  needed  in  a  working-tlieory 
of  inspiration,  is  that  it  shall  be  one  which  shall 
comprehend  in  its  scope  the  entire  Scriptures  in 
their  moral  and  religious  teachings. 

The  assertion  that  "  the  Bible  contains  the  Word 
of  God  "  is  amphibious.  It  belongs  to  two  widely 
diverse  realms  of  thought.  It  is  true,  or  it  is  false, 
accordmg  to  its  occult  meaning.  The  Bible  is  a 
unit.  In  its  unity  lies  the  climax  of  its  purpose 
and  its  power.  That  unity  can  not  be  broken  with 
impunity  to  the  fragments.  The  whole  or  nothing 
is  the  Word  of  God.  A  revelation  supported  by 
intermittent  authority,  inspired  in  patches  and  pa- 
rentheses, we  may  be  very  sure  is  not  a  revelation, 
either  of  God  or  from  God.  Its  structure  is  not 
Godi-like.  Its  errors  infuse  a  baleful  suspicion 
through  its  very  truths.  Whose  is  the  preroga- 
tive to  sit  in  judgment  for  us,  and  tell  us  where 
error  ends,  and  truth  begins  ?  We  grope  at  noon- 
day as  in  the  night. 

The  "  higher  criticism,"  for  instance,  in  some  of 
its  vagaries,  claims  to  prove  to  us  that  St.  Paul 
spoke  truth  in  one  epistle,  and  contradicted  it  in 
another.  What,  then,  is  St.  Paul  to  us,  more  than 
Swedenborg  ?  The  same  wisdom  teaches  us  that 
Moses  was  inspired  to  construct  the  Hebrew  juris- 
prudence, but  not  inspired  to  record  his  vision  of 
the  history  of  creation.  Who,  then,  is  Moses  to 
us,  more  than  Confucius?  As  a  historian  of  the 
divine  cosmogony,  he  is  not  so  much  as  an  expert 
in  modern  geology.     Again,  we  are  instructed  that 


174  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

our  Lord,  in  giving  His  sanction  to  the  Jewish 
faith  of  His  day  in  the  Old-Testament  Scriptures, 
meant  only  to  lend  His  authority  to  the  Messianic 
Psalms  and  a  few  historic  and  biographic  frag- 
ments, and  left  the  rest  to  the  learned  and 
destructive  criticism  of  future  times.  He  is  made 
to  appear  as  if  His  main  object  in  His  use  of  the 
ancient  Scriptures  were  to  fend  off  their  imposi- 
tions on  modern  faith.  Is  not  the  sequence  inev- 
itable, that  the  major  part  of  the  Old  Testament 
to-day,  and  to  us,  has  no  more  moral  authority 
than  the  Vedas  ?  Whether  it  has  as  much,  what 
means  has  the  unlettered  mind  of  knowing?  Such 
a  revelation  can  not  live  in  the  trust  and  the  affec- 
tions of  common  men.  It  has  no  place  in  the 
homes  of  the  people.  It  must  retire  to  the  upper 
shelves  of  scholastic  libraries,  or  be  locked  in  the 
Vatican  behind  oaken  doors.  Sooner  or  later  it 
must  go  into  oblivion  with  the  sacred  books  of 
other  mythologic  and  obsolete  theologies. 

To  teach  effectively  the  religion  of  a  Book  which 
is  progressive  in  its  construction,  we  must  have  a 
volume  which  is  one  in  its  system  of  moral  ideas. 
It  must  be  a  structure  in  which  every  part  gravi- 
tates to  a  center.  It  must  be  written  by  men  who 
knew  that  whereof  they  affirmed,  and  who,  con^ 
sciously  or  unconsciously,  wrote  under  the  direc- 
tion of  one  controlling  Mind.  In  their  religious 
teachings,  they  must  have  made  no  mistakes,  and 
not  written  by  guess-work.  They  must  not  have 
contradicted  each  other  or  themselves.     The  earlier 


Scholastic  Theories  of  Inspiration.         175 

writers  must  have  been  forerunners  to  the  later ; 
and,  in  the  end,  there  must  be  a  fulfillment  of 
divine  plan  which  shall  throw  back  a  light  upon 
the  beginning.  An  epic  poem  or  a  tragedy  is  not 
more  truly  a  structure,  compact  and  one,  than  we 
have  reason  to  expect  a  progressive  revelation  to 
be  which  shall  express  to  men  of  all  ages  the  mind 
of  God. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  theory  of  inspiration,  of 
which  the  final  outcome  is  that  Moses  contradicted 
Christ,  that  the  imprecations  of  David  conflict 
with  the  Epistles  of  St.  John,  and  that  St.  Paul 
could  not  even  repeat  himself  correctly,  abrogates 
all  claim  of  the  Scriptures  to  imperative  and 
divine  authority.  God  has  not  thus  contradicted 
God.  He  has  not  given  to  such  a  world  as  this  a 
volume  through  which  runs  no  golden  thread  of 
truth  unbroken.  That  He  has  given  to  a  lost 
world  a  book  inspired  here,  and  not  inspired  there, 
historic  now,  and  mythic  then,  blunderuig  some- 
times, and  by  hap  right  at  other  times,  and  that 
He  has  left  it  to  man's  infirm  intuitions  to  divine 
whether  it  is  oracular  anywhere,  is  absurd.  It  is 
not  like  God  to  build  such  a  rickety  structure. 

Nor  is  it  like  man  to  interpret  such  a  volume 
truthfully.  The  uncultured  mind  especially  can 
not  solve  the  riddle  of  such  a  book.  The  princi- 
ples of  its  interpretation  are  too  recondite,  and 
the  result  too  dubious.  Under  the  intellectual 
infirmities  induced  by  sin,  man  can  not  by  any 
skill  in  mental  ricochet  pick  out  the  inspired  frag- 


176  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

ments  from  such  a  medley  of  fable.  Whatever 
may  be  true  of  the  cultured  few,  the  many  would 
flounder  through  its  pages  as  hi  a  quagmh-e. 
What  else  could  the  vast  majority  of  men  do  with 
it,  but  to  give  it  up,  —  some  in  contempt,  and 
some  in  despair?  Socrates,  when  he  prayed  that 
a  teacher  might  be  sent  from  God,  craved  no  such 
revelation  as  this.  In  all  soberness,  would  not 
Cicero  be  as  valuable  a  teacher  of  immortality? 
Would  not  Marcus  Aurelius  be  a  better  guide  to 
a  manly  philosophic  life  ?  The  book  of  Nature 
surely  would  be  infinitely  superior  to  such  a  Book 
of  God. 

The  views  here  advanced  are  further  enforced 
by  another  fact.  It  is,  that  we  need  in  our  theory 
of  inspiration  to  find  an  adaptation  to  men  who 
are  undergoing  the  discipline  of  probation.  One 
thing  seems  to  be  often  strangely  overlooked  in 
discussions  of  this  and  kindred  doctrines.  It  is, 
that  man  here  is  in  no  ideal  world.  Life  is  too 
severe  a  strain  upon  his  physical  and  moral  nature 
to  leave  him  mental  force  enough  to  settle  for 
himself  the  interminable  questions  to  which  scho- 
lastic theories  of  such  doctrines  give  rise.  We 
need  in  such  a  life  a  revelation  from  God  and  of 
God  which  shall  speak  its  own  authority.  That 
authority  must  be  such  that  ignorant  men  can  be 
made  to  understand  it.  Men  not  trained  in  schools 
must  be  able  to  see  the  reason  for  it.  Men  bur- 
dened by  life's  discipline  must  be  able  to  take  it 
home  to  life's  emergencies. 


Scholastic  Theories  of  Inspiration.         177 

The  argument  for  the  evidences  of  Christianity, 
which  has  for  ages  commanded  the  faith  of  believ- 
ers, is  mainly  that  derived  from  the  response  of 
the  Christian  heart  to  the  Bible  as  a  revelation 
from  God.  We  believe  it  because  it  is  such  a 
revelation  as  we  need,  and  such  as  it  is  like  God 
to  give.  We  have  thus  claimed  that  the  Bible 
does  speak  for  itself.  The  unlettered  mind  has 
credible  evidence  of  its  divinity,  without  harassing 
itself  with  the  scholastic  side  of  the  proof.  This 
evidence  we  can  not  afford  to  surrender.  Yet  we 
are  in  danger  of  losing  it  in  the  complications 
of  criticism  on  the  subject  of  inspiration,  which 
suggest  more  qualifications  than  principles,  more 
exceptions  than  rules.  We  need  the  doctrine,  its 
statement  and  its  proofs,  in  such  forms  as  shall 
commend  both  to  common  men  in  common  life. 

In  the  shock  of  overwhelming  sorrows,  when 
men's  need  is  sorest,  and  their  mental  force  ex- 
hausted, they  must  be  able  to  find  God  everywhere 
present  in  the  Book,  without  the  drawback  of  mis- 
givings, lest  it  be  mistaken  here,  and  fabulous 
there,  and  perhaps  absolute  nowhere.  Sick  men 
must  be  competent  to  find  comfort  in  it,  and 
tempted  men  to  find  strength,  and  dying  men 
peace,  without  abatement  by  reason  of  doubts  of 
its  authority. 

All  these  uses  of  the  Book  are  impracticable  to 
the  extreme  of  absurdity,  if  the  best  and  only 
revelation  we  have  is  one  which  has  for  its  chief 
aim  to  put  us  on  treble  guard  against  believing  too 


178  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

much.  We  are  in  no  condition  to  be  so  morbidly- 
shy  of  faith.  We  are  in  a  wretched  plight  indeed, 
if  our  only  medium  of  converse  with  God  plunges 
us  all  into  the  vortex  of  scholasticism,  and  leaves 
us  there,  to  find  out  by  our  own  distempered  vision 
what  inspiration  is,  and  where  it  is,  and  how  much 
it  covers  with  authority,  and  how  much  with  doubt, 
and  how  it  gets  along  with  its  own  inconsistencies 
and  blunders.  Of  all  men  most  miserable  are  we, 
if,  in  response  to  our  despairing  cry  for  help,  God 
has  given  us  a  revelation,  in  which,  when  we  sum 
up  the  whole  of  it,  and  cast  the  balance  of  its 
teachings,  we  must  find  more  to  reject  than  to 
believe,  more  to  foster  doubt  than  faith,  more 
to  start  new  despairs  than  to  relieve  old  ones. 
Such  a  revelation,  be  it  repeated,  is  not  the  revela- 
tion which  a  lost  world  needs.  Therefore  the 
presumption  is  beyond  rebuttal,  that  such  is  not 
the  revelation  we  have  received. 


XT. 

THE  NEW-ENGLAND  CLERGY  AND  THE  ANTI- 
SLAVERY  REFORM. 

PART  I. 

In  every  great  revolution  of  opinion,  three  classes 
of  men  are  the  chief  belligerents.  They  are  the 
resistants,  the  destructives,  and  the  reformers. 
The  resistants  are  the  men  who  hold  on  to  things 
as  they  are.  They  resist  change  because  it  is 
change.  The  destructives  are  the  men  who  would 
break  up  society  itself  to  get  rid  of  its  abuses. 
They  are  the  men  of  one  idea.  The  reformers 
are  men  of  balanced  ideas  who  look  before  and 
after.  They  are  tolerant  of  evils  which  are  curing 
themselves.  They  labor  patiently  for  bloodless 
revolutions. 

With  these  distinctions  in  mind,  it  is  not  dif- 
ficult to  classify  the  men  who  were  eminent  in  the 
war  of  antislavery  opinion,  thirty  to  fifty  years 
ago.  The  proslavery  men  were  resistants.  They 
resisted,  not  only  the  liberty  of  the  black  man,  but 
almost  every  thing  else  which  a  free  people  value. 
Free  speech,  a  free  press,  a  free  postal-service,  free 
soil,  fi"ee   pulpits,  free   schools,  they   resisted   as 

179 


180  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

stoutly  as  free  negroes.  The  very  word  "  free  " 
was  a  bugbear  to  their  fancy  in  the  daytime,  and 
a  nightmare  to  their  dreams. 

The  Abolitionists,  technically  so  called,  were 
destructives.  They  were  honest,  outspoken  men, 
who  made  no  secret  of  their  aim  to  destroy  the 
Union  of  these  States.  The  national  Constitution, 
in  their  amiable  dialect,  was  a  "covenant  with 
hell.!^  Their  code  of  ethics  was  sublimely  simple 
and  compact.  They  saw  no  difference  between  an 
individual  and  an  organic  wrong.  Wrong  was 
wrong.  That  was  the  end  of  argument.  What 
was  left  to  argue  about?  A  wrong  interlaced 
with,  and  grown  under,  the  traditions,  the  usages, 
the  laws,  the  institutions,  and  the  wills  of  thirty 
millions  of  independent  minds,  must  be  treated  as 
if  it  were  the  whim  of  one.  A  wrong  inherited 
centuries  ago  was  to  be  no  more  patiently  dealt 
with  than  a  wrong  enacted  yesterday.  They  there- 
fore trusted  nothing  to  the  slow  foot  of  time. 
Institutions  which  had  taken  ages  in  the  building, 
must  be  revolutionized  in  a  night.  Their  theory 
took  the  whole  siibject  of  American  slavery  out  of 
the  domain  of  practical  statesmanship,  and  con- 
signed it  to  the  conscience  of  a  child. 

As  in  all  other  developments  of  fanatical  reform, 
a  vein  of  malign  passion  ran  side  by  side  with 
much  that  was  noble  through  their  theories  and 
policies  and  speech.  In  debate,  their  habit  was 
abusive  as  opposed  to  suasive.  The  singleness  of 
their  aim  gave  them  the  power  which  all  earnest 


New  -England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      181 

men  have,  who  are  not  trammeled  by  qualified 
convictions.  The  opinions  of  most  men  are  prob- 
abilities. Theirs  were  certainties,  absolute  in  evi- 
dence, and  imperial  in  authority.  They  were 
passionate  thinkers,  who  talked,  right  on,  and  acted 
as  they  talked. 

So  much  as  this  must  be  admitted  for  them  :  they 
had  a  sylvan  robustness  of  thought  which  impelled 
them  to  say  what  they  meant,  and  to  go  straight 
to  their  objects.  If  they  had  talked  less  about 
their  honesty  of  purpose,  and  truth  of  speech,  one 
would  give  them  credit  for  more  of  both.  But, 
in  the  main,  they  were  loyal  to  their  thought. 
They  believed  in  themselves,  and  trusted  theu*  own 
intuitions  against  the  world.  It  would  be  a  libel 
to  question  their  sincerity. 

It  is  not  a  libel  to  say  that  the  intensity  of  their 
convictions  on  the  slavery  question  was  not  all  the 
intensity  of  conscience.  It  was,  in  part,  the  fury 
of  dissent.  Conscientious  men  are  apt  to  be  tem- 
pestuously conscientious  if  they  have  something 
to  hate.  George  Ripley,  the  accomplished  presi- 
dent of  the  "Brook  Farm,"  said  of  one.  of  that 
eccentric  household,  "  He  would  hoe  corn  all  day, 
Sunday,  if  I  would  let  him ;  but  all  Massachusetts 
could  not  make  him  do  it  on  Monday."  The  con- 
science of  reform  has  a  double  nature.  One-half 
of  it  is  the  iconoclasm  of  dissent.  So  it  was  with 
the  leaders  of  abolitionism  in  New  England. 

It  was  in  keeping  with  their  temper,  that  they 
should  avowedly,  and  on  principle,  fling  the  chief 


182  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

weight  of  their  cause  upon  the  power  of  invective. 
Argument  was  secondary,  because  conclusions  were 
foregone.  They  made  a  study  of  denunciation  as 
of  a  fine  art.  A  new  epithet  of  vituperation,  or 
figure  of  objurgatory  speech,  was  to  their  dialect 
like  a  new  rifle  to  an  arsenal.  The  author  deserved 
a  patent  for  it.  When  Mr.  Garrison  had  hatched 
overnight,  in  his  inventive  brain,  a  new  lampoon 
upon  the  American  Church,  Marlborough  Chapel 
resounded  with  it  the  next  morning.  He  orated 
with  beaming  smile  about  the  Church  as  "  the 
spawn  of  hell."  Then  the  few  scores  of  listeners 
on  the  floor  were  titillated  in  sympathy. 

Those  were  rare  days  for  studying  the  art  of 
eloquence  in  its  failures.  Probably  history  does 
not  contain  an  example  of  another  body  of  men, 
possessed  of  a  fair  average  of  brains,  and  some  of 
them  of  culture,  and  led  by  one  man  who  belonged 
to  the  supreme  rank  of  modern  rhetoricians  rather 
than  orators  (for  orators  win  their  audiences : 
Wendell  Phillips  seldom  did),  who  on  the  platform 
practiced  so  little  tact  in  dealing  with  men,  or  who 
threshed  the  mother  tongue  so  ferociously  in  the 
dialect  of  abuse.  They  were  destructives  in  their 
theories  of  government ;  they  were  destructives  in 
their  measures  of  policy ;  they  were  destructives 
in  their  judgments  of  institutions  and  of  public 
men;  they  were  destructives  in  their  style  of 
debate. 

Their  magnetism  drew  into  alliance  with  them, 
as  that  of  such  men  always  does,  sympathetic  de- 


New  -England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      183 

structives  of  every  stripe  and  color.  To  a  looker- 
on,  it  seemed  as  if  all  the  "  cranks  "  on  the  conti- 
nent were  drawn  in  invisible  grooves  to  the  plat- 
form of  abolition.  Divorced  women  could  talk 
there  of  the  tyranny  of  the  marriage  laws ;  beard- 
less boys  could  expose  there  the  blunders  of  Moses 
and  the  barbarism  of  the  Old  Testament;  social- 
ists could  expound  there  the  inhumanity  of  prop- 
erty in  land ;  laborers  on  a  strike  could  denounce 
there  the  despotism  of  capital ;  "  Come-outers " 
could  recite  there  in  sing-song  the  corruption  of 
the  Church ;  and  "  Father  Lampson,"  a  harmless 
lunatic,  who,  with  his  snath  bereft  of  blade,  per- 
sonated "Old  Time,"  could  denounce  there  the 
crimes  of  Scribes  and  Pharisees.  In  short,  every 
bee  in  everybody's  bonnet  had  a  chance  to  hum 
there.  If  a  long-haired  man  had  a  revelation  from 
heaven  against  the  sin  of  short  hair,  and  a  short- 
haired  woman  had  her  dispatch  against  the  crime 
of  long  hair,  both  could  join  hands  there  lovingly, 
and  have  their  say  out.  This  is  a  caricature,  but 
it  is  a  caricature  of  real  life. 

That  it  is  so,  is  confirmed  by  a  description  given 
by  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  of  a  similar  assemblage, 
of  which  he  was  himself  a  member,  in  which  fig- 
ured the  majority  of  those  who  were  leaders  in 
those  daj^s  of  the  antislavery  reform.  He  says, 
"If  the  assembly  was  disorderly,  it  was  pictur- 
esque. Madmen,  madwomen,  men  with  beards, 
Dunkers,  Muggietonians,  Come-outers,  Groaners, 
Agrarians,  Seventh-day  Baptists,  Quakers,  Aboli- 


184  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

tionists,  Calvinists,  Unitarians,  and  Philosophers, 
—  all  came  successively  to  the  top." 

The  "  picturesqueness  "  of  the  abolitionist  as- 
semblies reminded  a  spectator  of  Edmund  Burke's 
celebrated  caricature  of  Lord  Chatham's  coalition 
ministry.  "  He  made  an  administration  so  check- 
ered and  speckled,  a  piece  of  joinery  so  crossly 
indented  and  whimsically  dovetailed,  such  a  tes- 
sellated pavement  without  cement,  here  a  bit  of 
black  stone,  and  there  a  bit  of  white,  patriots  and 
courtiers,  Whigs  and  Tories,  who  had  never  spoken 
to  each  other  in  their  lives  until  they  found  them- 
selves, they  knew  not  how,  pigging  together  in  the 
same  truckle-bed." 

To  a  good-natured  looker-on,  who  had  strolled 
in  on  a  May  morning,  —  a  country  parson,  perhaps, 
who  sought  recreation  in  hearing  himself  casti- 
gated, and  in  finding  out  what  a  crimsoned  sinner 
he  was,  —  there  were  two  redeeming  features  of 
the  show.  One  was  the  bland,  fatherly  smile 
of  William  Lloyd  Garrison  in  the  chair.  He  was 
at  heart  a  benignant  man ;  and  his  look  seemed  to 
overflow  with  the  oil  of  human  kindness,  at  the 
very  moment  when  his  speech  was  as  the  oil  of 
vitriol.  Like  Isaak  Walton's  angler,  he  hooked 
his  worm  "  as  if  he  loved  it."  The  good  of  that 
to  the  worm  was  not  so  obvious,  but  that  was  the 
way  of  it.  The  other  was  the  grand  and  stirring 
songs  of  the  "Hutchinson  Family."  They  were 
the  bugle-call  of  freedom.  For  downright  anti- 
slavery  effect,  they  were  worth  all  the  rest  put 


I^ew  -England  Clergy  and  Antislavery,      185 

together.  They  made  one's  heart  swell  with  sym- 
pathy for  the  slave  till  it  was  big  enough  to  lift 
the  roof  off.  The  philippic  from  the  platform 
went  in  at  one  ear,  and  out  at  the  other.  The 
song  lived  in  one's  soul  for  many  a  day. 

Between  these  two  extremes  in  the  conflict  of 
the  century  stood  the  genuine  reformers.  These 
constituted  the  great  bulk  of  the  thinking  minds 
of  the  North  who  gave  to  the  subject  reflection 
enough  to  have  serious  convictions  about  it.  In 
this  immense  intermediate  class  stood  the  vast 
majority  of  the  clergy  —  well,  for  the  want  of  a 
more  exact  dividing-line,  we  will  say  —  north  of 
a  line  running  zigzag  westward  from  New-York 
City,  and  following  northward  the  Atlantic  coast. 
And  foremost  of  these  were  the  clergy  of  New 
England. 

Mr.  Webster  never  uttered  a  truer  word  than 
when  he  told  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  that 
hostility  to  slavery  was  born  in  the  religion  of  his 
constituents.  It  was  their  ancestral  birthright. 
They  drank  it  in  with  their  mother's  milk.  They 
breathed  it  in  the  atmosphere  of  their  Sunday 
schools  and  their  family  prayers.  They  were 
taught  it  in  the  thoughtful  sermons  of  their  pul- 
pits, and  in  the  masterly  decisions  of  their  courts. 
They  sang  it  on  Thanksgiving  and  Fast  Days,  and 
in  the  ballads  of  the  farm  and  the  workshop. 
Even  the  doggerel  of  "Yankee  Doodle,"  by  its 
associations  with  Independence  Day  and  Bunker 
Hill,  had  become  their  festal  song  of  liberty.     No 


186  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

power  of  suasion  or  of  force  could  change  the 
convictions  of  such  a  people.  President  Lincoln 
spoke  the  intuition  of  the  New-England  mind  from 
its  cradle  when  he  said,  ''  If  slavery  is  not  wrong, 
nothing  is  wrong."  So  believed,  and  on  that  belief 
acted,  the  churches  and  clergy  of  these  Eastern 
States. 

There  were  exceptions.  But  these  owed  their 
notoriety  chiefly  to  the  paucity  of  their  numbers, 
to  the  contrast  of  their  opinions  with  the  back- 
ground of  public  sentiment,  and  to  the  fact  that 
they  had  no  perceptible  influence  on  the  general 
mind.  Outside  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  we  can 
not  recall  a  dozen  names  in  the  entire  clergy  of 
New  England,  of  men  eminent  in  position  and  in 
character,  who  held  proslavery  views.  We  may 
safely  venture  the  guess,  that  more  than  half  of 
the  dozen,  if  they  could  be  found,  would  have 
pocketed  in  silence  the  "  Fugitive-slave  Law,"  if 
a  hunted  negro  had  come  to  them  at  midnight, 
begging  for  food  and  a  hiding-place.  One  of  the 
curious  psychological  phenomena  of  those  times 
was,  that  good  men  could  be  proslavery  in  theory, 
yet  antislavery  at  heart.  The  Rev.  Nehemiah 
Adams,  D.D.,  the  author  of  "  The  South  Side 
View,"  never  could  understand  why  men  called 
him  an  advocate  of  slavery.  He  considered  him- 
self as  honest  an  antislavery  man  as  any  of  us. 
So  true  is  it  that 

"Man  sees  not  what  he  seems  to  see : 
He  seems  not  what  he  is." 


New -England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.     187 

The  political  opinions  of  that  small  group  of 
clergymen  carried  no  weight  with  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  New-England  churches.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
Lord  of  Hanover,  president  of  Dartmouth  College, 
was  one  of  the  few  Northern  preachers  who  found 
in  the  Bible  the  enslavement  of  the  black  man  as 
the  law  of  the  ages.  This  theory  he  honestly 
advocated  for  thirty  years.  It  was  one  of  a  group 
of  pessimistic  notions  which  he  elaborated  with 
great  learning  and  ingenuity.  He  backed  them 
up  by  a  personal  character  of  unquestioned  force 
and  rare  purity.  Yet  near  the  end  of  his  life, 
when  he  came  to  record  his  farewell  message  to 
the  world,  he  confessed  that  his  thirty  years  of 
faithful  teaching  had  not  resulted,  so  far  as  he 
knew,  in  the  conversion  to  his  views  of  a  single 
mind  outside  of  his  own  kindred. 

So  it  was  everywhere.  Proslavery  opinions 
fell  stillborn  from  the  New-England  press.  They 
found  unresponsive  or  indignant  hearers  from 
New-England  pulpits.  The  pulpits  were  few  that 
ventured  to  proclaim  them.  As  to  other  litera- 
ture, where  on  the  broad  earth  is  there  a  pro- 
slavery  poem  or  drama  or  history,  or  so  much  as 
a  ballad  fit  to  be  sung  by  a  milkmaid  ?  The  world 
sings  liberty,  never  servitude. 

A  story  went  the  round  of  ecclesiastical  gossip 
in  those  days,  which  illustrates  the  popular  esti- 
mate of  the  intellectual  force  which  gravitated 
into  the  antislavery  ranks  among  the  clergy. 
Two  parishioners  in  a  metropolitan  congregation 


188  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

were  discussing  the  merits  of  a  certain  candidate 
for  their  vacant  pulpit.  They  were  resistants  in 
their  politics.  Said  one,  respecting  the  popular 
candidate,  "  I  don't  want  him :  I  am  told  that  he 
is  an  abolitionist."  —  "Well,"  said  his  friend  in 
reply,  "I  have  made  up  my  mind,  that  in  these 
times  we  have  got  to  have  an  abolitionist  or  a 
fool."  To  men  of  that  stripe,  all  antislavery  min- 
isters were  abolitionists.  The  story  loses  some- 
what of  its  piquancy  by  the  expurgation  of  certain 
expletives  which  were  in  the  original.  But  it  illus- 
trates where  the  popular  judgment  looked  to  find 
the  men  of  weight  in  the  clerical  profession.  The 
candidate  was  Rev.  Dr.  Stone  of  the  Park-street 
Church,  Boston. 

It  must  be  conceded  that  the  Christian  senti- 
ment of  reform  at  that  time  varied  greatly  in 
intensity.  Some  men  were  at  tropic  heat,  others 
in  a  cooler  zone.  Good  men  differed  in  their  pol- 
icies. They  were  not  agreed  as  to  the  limits  of 
Northern  responsibility  for  Southern  wrong.  Espe- 
cially, they  were  not  at  one  respecting  the  duty  of 
benevolent  societies,  chartered  and  holding  funds 
for  other  purposes,  to  bear  public  testimony  against 
the  national  sin.  We  have  no  word  of  apology  to 
utter  for  those  adroit  societies  whose  mission  under 
their  charter  laid  upon  them  the  duty  of  speech, 
and  whose  diplomatic  voice  was  silent.  Silence, 
then,  was  more  than  speech :  it  was  connivance  at 
wrong.  Let  it  receive  from  impartial  history  the 
verdict  it  deserves !     No  word  of  ours  shall  gloss 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery,      189 

or  lighten  it.  But  what  we  claim  is  this,  —  that 
those  differences  were  but  surface-currents.  Like 
other  surface-currents,  they  took  on  at  the  time 
the  look  and  the  dignity  of  the  tides ;  but  they 
were  not  the  tides.  They  never  represented  the 
great  deeps  of  New-England  thought. 

Looking  back  to  those  times,  now  that  the  long 
agony  is  over,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  God  was  moving 
more  rapidly  than  men  were.  He  was  moving  in 
the  whirlwind,  we  in  the  evening  zephyr.  We  can 
see  now,  that  had  we  all  felt  more  intensely,  and 
spoken  more  imperatively,  and  acted  more  aggres- 
sively, we  still  should  not  have  kept  pace  with  the 
swift-footed  angel  of  revolution. 

But  the  fact,  vital  to  the  present  purpose,  is  that 
the  great  undercurrent  of  Christian  opinion  was 
moving  in  only  one  way.  The  great  deeps  were 
agitated  to  but  one  purpose.  They  massed  them- 
selves as  with  the  volume  of  the  sea  agfainst  the 
great  national  crime.  They  were  crowding  it 
steadily  to  its  doom.  If  the  movement  did  not 
equal  in  velocity  that  of  the  providence  of  God, 
still  it  was  in  profound  sympathy  with  that. 

Moreover,  it  represented,  on  the  ethical  side  of 
the  conflict,  the  only  movement  which  was  so 
grounded  in  temperate  opinions,  and  conducted  by 
practical  wisdom,  as  to  encourage  hope  of  accom- 
j)lishing  any  thing  but  the  horrors  of  civil  war. 
The  religious  mind  of  New  England  was  a  sub- 
stantial unit  in  its  aim  at  a  peaceful  abolition  of 
slavery.     Its  convictions  were  outspoken,  and  fore- 


190  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

most  in  their  expression  were  the  New-England 
ministry.  The  charge  which  is  now  sometimes 
made,  either  in  ignorance  or  in  malice,  that  the 
New-England  pulpit  was  craven  and  time-serving 
on  the  subject,  is  libelous.  Nobody  who  knows 
those  times  well,  really  believes  it.  It  is  worthy 
only  of  that  acrid  class  of  minds  who  are  best 
known  as  "minister-haters." 

We  find  proof  of  the  position  here  claimed  for 
our  clergy  in  the  volumes  upon  volumes  of  Fast 
Day  and  Thanksgiving  sermons  which  accumu- 
lated all  through  that  half-century.  Confirmatory 
evidence  appears  in  the  records  of  our  ecclesiasti- 
cal associations.  Those,  year  after  year,  bore  sol- 
emn testimony  against  the  crime  which  threatened 
the  life  of  the  Republic.  Then,  as  the  conflict 
deepened,  and  to  him  whose  ear  was  near  the 
underground  of  society  the  roar  of  artillery  boomed 
from  the  near  future,  we  see  three  thousand  and 
fifty  of  the  clergy  of  New  England,  led,  I  believe, 
by  the  reverend  editor  of  "The  Congregational- 
ist,"  entering  their  protest  as  ministers  of  God 
against  the  iniquity  before  the  United-States  Sen- 
ate. That  protest  would  have  had  the  names  of 
nine-tenths  of  the  New-England  ministry,  if  there 
had  been  time  to  collect  them. 

The  significance  of  that  testimony  may  be  meas- 
ured by  the  wrath  with  which  it  was  resented. 
Senator  Douglas  was  astute  enough  to  see  in  it 
the  most  fatal  single  blow  which  had  been  struck 
at  slavery  in  his  day.     He  was  a  son  of  Vermont. 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery,      191 

He  knew  that  back  of  that  protest  stood,  in  solid 
phalanx,  the  Christian  mind  of  these  Eastern 
States.  He  knew,  too,  that  that  was  a  power 
which  had  never  failed  to  make  its  words  felt  in 
deeds  in  crises  of  the  nation's  destiny.  He  heard 
in  it  the  prophecy  of  doom.  His  own  political 
aspirations,  founded  on  the  extension  of  slavery, 
were  fated  from  that  hour,  even  if  a  more  grim 
and  imperative  fate  had  not  been  creeping  upon 
him.  Hence  arose  the  incontroUable  ire  with 
which  he  greeted  the  expostulation  of  the  New- 
England  pulpit. 

If  further  proof  were  needed,  it  is  forthcoming 
in  the  almost  universal  tone  of  the  religious  press. 
With  the  exception  of  one  sect,  small  in  numbers, 
whose  temperament  and  traditions  held  it  aloof 
from  all  reforms,  our  periodical  press  spoke  almost 
as  with  the  voice  of  one  man.  It  varied  as  the 
people  did  in  intensity  of  utterance,  but  in  sub- 
stantial meaning  that  utterance  was  one.  The 
trumpet  gave  one  prolonged  blast  of  warning. 

These  tokens  of  the  Christian  sentiment  of  New 
England  do  not  admit  of  question.  They  have 
gone  into  history.  They  are  graven  in  the  rock 
for  ever.  As  Mr.  Webster  said  to  Gen.  Hayne  of 
the  national  fame  of  Massachusetts,  so  say  we 
of  all  New  England :  "  There  is  her  history.  The 
world  knows  it  by  heart."  And  we  claim,  that  in 
the  forefront  of  the  warfare  of  antislavery  opin- 
ion, which  this  group  of  States  conducted,  stood 
our  churches  and  their  ministry. 


192  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

We  claim  for  them  more  than  this.  We  claim, 
that,  if  they  had  been  let  alone,  they  would  have 
been  successful.  Turn  back  a  hundred  years. 
Look  at  the  public  sentiment  of  Virginia  at  that 
time.  Read  the  deliverances  of  Jefferson,  of  Pat- 
rick Henry,  of  James  Madison,  of  George  Wyeth, 
—  indeed,  of  all  the  public  men  of  the  Old  Domin- 
ion. Mark  their  abhorrence  of  the  policy  which 
threatened  to  make  Virginia  a  slave-breeding  State. 
Note  the  social  degradation  of  the  men  who  con- 
ducted the  domestic  slave-trade.  Observe  the 
unanimous  voice  of  the  pulpit  against  the  break- 
ing-up  of  negro  families  by  sale.  One  can  not 
recall  these  signs  of  the  drift  of  public  opinion, 
without  discerning  that  Virginia  was  on  the  verge 
of  peaceful  emancipation.  Every  thing  leaned  that 
way.  And,  as  the  social  forces  of  the  Republic 
were  then  poised,  as  went  Virginia,  so  went  all  the 
rest  of  the  slave  States.     That  was  fore-ordained. 

Now,  we  claim,  that  starting  with  that  drift  of 
public  sentiment  in  the  Old  Dominion,  and  with 
the  prestige  which  that  State  had  in  the  politics 
of  the  country,  if  the  great  alliances  of  Chi^istian 
faith  had  been  left  to  work  in  their  normal  way, 
unhampered  by  the  inflammatory  policies  of  the 
extremists  on  either  side,  and  specially  by  those 
which  at  the  North  soon  succeeded  in  identifjdng 
antislavery  with  infidelity,  slavery  would  have 
succumbed  to  moral  power.  To  doubt  it,  is  to 
doubt  all  Christian  history.  The  negro  would 
have  come  up  to  the  rights  of  liberty,  as  he  grew 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      193 

up  to  the  duties  of  liberty.  He  would  not  have 
been  exploded  from  the  cannon's  mouth  into  the 
miserable  fiction  of  it  which  he  has  to-day,  in 
which  he  has  neither  the  intelligence  to  prize,  nor 
the  power  to  use,  a  freeman's  ballot.  Every  decade 
adds  to  the  proof,  that  our  ministry,  and  those 
who  thought  with  them,  were  right  in  their  faith 
that  liberty  grozvs :  it  never  sails  into  the  sulphu- 
rous air  on  the  wings  of  dynamite. 

This  nation,  in  the  first  century  of  its  existence, 
had  the  grandest  opportunity  that  nation  ever  had, 
of  putting  to  the  proof  the  power  of  Christianity 
to  extirpate  a  great  national  wrong,  without  stroke 
of  sword,  or  beat  of  drum — and  we  flung  it  to 
the  winds !  In  the  forefront  of  the  hosts  who 
committed  the  awful  sacrilege,  w^e  charge  that 
there  stood  the  "  fire-eaters  "  of  the  South  and  the 
abolitionists  of  New  England.  On  their  heads 
rests  the  responsibility  for  the  civil  war,  and  the 
outpouring  of  the  life-blood  of  five  hundred  thou- 
sand men!  Such  is  the  verdict  which  history 
will  render  in  the  coming  ages,  when  the  world 
has  become  used  to  the  righting  of  organic  wrongs 
by  bloodless  revolutions. 


XYI. 

THE  NEW-ENGLAND  CLERGY  AND  THE  ANTI- 
SLAVERY  REFORM. 

PABT  n. 

What  were  the  causes  which  created  mutual 
repulsion  between  those  who,  in  a  former  article, 
have  been  termed  the  reformers  and  the  destruc- 
tives in  the  antislavery  controversy?  The  story 
is  soon  told. 

1.  The  reformers  believed,  as  the  destructives 
did  not,  in  the  rectitude  of  tolerating  organic  evils 
till  a  Christian  civilization  had  an  opportunity  to 
undermine  them.  They  had  great  faith  in  the 
reformatory  force  of  truth,  working  slowly  and 
underground.  They  accepted,  with  amendments, 
the  Mosaic  economy  in  dealing  with  human  servi- 
tude. They  did  not  believe  that  the  world  had 
outgrown  it.  Their  religion  had,  in  other  ages 
and  countries,  uprooted  barbarisms  more  inveter- 
ate than  that  of  American  slavery.  It  had  done 
this,  not  by  tempestuous  and  bloody  assault,  but 
on  the  Mosaic  principle,  by  silent  and  gradual 
undermining.  They  believed  that  it  could  do  the 
same  again.     It  might  act  with  labyrinthal  intri- 

191 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery,      195 

cacy  of  movement,  but  with  exactest  clockwork, 
which  would  never  go  back  on  its  ow^n  advances. 

They  accepted  it,  therefore,  as  one  of  the  politi- 
cal principles,  wrapped  up  in  the  very  life  of  Chris- 
tianity, that  sanguinary  revolutions  and  "reigns 
of  terror  "  are  not  the  normal  method  of  organic 
changes  in  social  order.  On  this  principle  they 
acted.  They  conceived  that  they  had  no  right  to 
effect  the  destruction  of  the  wrong  which  threat- 
ened the  nation's  life  by  the  convulsions  of  civil 
war.  They  had  no  right  to  prevent  death  in  one 
way  by  inflicting  death  in  another.  What  for, 
they  asked  in  homespun  Saxon,  should  they  do 
that  thing  ?  If,  in  the  purposes  of  God,  such  was 
to  be  the  permitted  manner  of  the  end,  the  bolt 
must  be  forged  and  hurled  by  other  hands  than 
theirs.  They  would  meet  their  solemn  duty  in 
the  tragedy  if  it  came,  when  it  came ;  but  it  was 
not  theirs  to  create  the  duty,  nor  to  inflict  the 
tragedy.     Theirs  was  a  mission  of  peace. 

We  confidently  ask  what  other  position  could 
they  hold,  as  preachers  of  Christianity  ?  Our  reli- 
gion, from  the  beginning,  in  its  relation  to  political 
reforms,  has  been  a  power  of  peaceful  revolution. 
As  related  to  African  servitude,  it  was  that  or 
nothing.  Its  ordained  ministers  could  do  no 
otherwise  than  to  choose  a  policy  which  would 
not  set  rivers  of  blood  to  flowing.  Were  they 
sinners  above  all  other  men  for  this?  Had  this 
been  the  only  cause  of  repulsion  between  the  two 
wings  of  reform,  it  would  have  been  imperative. 


196  My  Study:  and  Other  Assays. 

2.  But  it  was  not  the  only  cause.  The  reformers 
believed,  as  the  destructives  did  not,  that  slavery 
could  be  abolished  without  sundering  the  union 
of  the  States.  The  dissolution  of  the  union  was 
the  avowed  object  of  agitation  by  the  destructives. 
This  was  their  supreme  aim.  Till  it  was  achieved, 
nothing  was  achieved.  The  Union,  like  the 
Church,  was  a  "  fraternity  of  man-stealers  "  and  a 
"band  of  thugs."  No  honest  man  could  parti- 
cipate in  it  for  an  hour.  Wendell  Phillips  could 
not  vote  for  a  deputy  sheriff  in  Boston,  so  long  as 
a  bedridden  slave  was  fed  by  his  owner  in  Texas. 
For  forty  years  he  and  his  colleagues  lived  for  the 
disruption  of  the  republic. 

The  reformers  denied  both  the  premise  and  the 
conclusion.  To  the  clergy  of  New  England,  espe- 
cially, tills  republic  was  a  sacred  thing.  They  saw 
in  it,  not  the  work  of  man.  The  hand  of  God 
was  in  it  from  the  beginning.  Their  godly  an- 
cestry had  founded  it  in  prayer.  They  had  a 
religious  faith  about  it  which  took  in  the  destinies 
of  the  world  within  its  range.  The  liberty  and  re- 
demption of  all  mankind  were  susx3ended  upon 
its  perpetuity. 

This  conception  of  the  mission  of  these  States 
they  had  inherited  from  the  colonial  and  revolu- 
tionary times.  Says  John  Adams,  "  I  always  con- 
sider the  settlement  of  America  with  reverence 
and  wonder  as  the  opening  of  a  grand  scene  and 
design  of  Providence  for  the  illumination  of  the 
ignorant   and   the  emancipation   of  mankind   all 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      197 

over  the  earth."  John  Adams  obtained  that  idea 
from  the  clergy  of  his  time.  The  pulpit  then  was 
full  of  it.  From  thence  it  came  down  to  the  pul- 
pit of  the  period  we  are  reviewing.  To  the  min- 
istry of  that  period,  it  was  a  relic  of  a  more  than 
heroic  age.  It  was  never  forgotten  at  their 
Thanksgiving  festivals ;  they  were  wont  to  pray 
for  the  Union  and  the  bondman  in  the  same  breath. 
Such  was  their  politico-religious  creed.  They  be- 
lieved it  with  heart  and  soul.  What  for,  they 
asked,  after  these  years  of  fidelity  to  it  as  a  sacred 
trust,  should  they  be  faithless  to  the  republic  now  ? 
Had  there  been  no  other  reason  for  the  antagonism 
of  the  two  antislavery  forces,  this  alone  would 
have  driven  them  apart. 

3.  But  there  was  another  reason.  The  reform- 
ers believed,  as  the  destructives  did  not,  in  the 
efficacy  of  the  suasive  as  opposed  to  the  abusive 
policy  in  debate.  The  ascendency,  almost  the 
monopoly,  given  by  the  destructives  to  invective 
in  the  controversy,  was  offensive  to  the  good  taste, 
and  revolting  to  the  good  sense,  of  the  reformers. 

The  great  bulk  of  any  large,  and  specially  an 
educated,  body  of  public  men  is  made  up  of  men 
of  robust  sense.  The  ministry  of  New  England 
were  men  of  that  stamp.  They  were  not  im- 
beciles, and  they  were  not  savages  in  controversy. 
They  could  see  no  reason  for  exempting  slavery 
from  the  laws  of  courteous  and  honorable  discus- 
sion. To  make  the  exemption  was  a  confession. 
It  confessed  that  their  cause  could  not  stand  the 


198  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

test  of  the  manly  modes  in  wliicli  thinking  men 
were  accustomed  to  deal  with  thinking  men. 
Frantic  vituperation  in  a  great  national  debate 
is  a  sign  of  conscious  weakness  or  of  conscious 
wrong. 

The  principle  of  the  destructives  in  this  thing 
was  criminal ;  if  not  criminal,  it  was  ungentle- 
manly  ;  if  not  ungentlemanly,  it  was  silly ;  if  not 
silly,  it  was  insane.  The  policy  of  agitation 
founded  on  it  was  not  worthy  of  bearded  men. 
It  was  the  eccentricity  of  a  common  scold.  States- 
men at  the  head  of  sovereign  republics,  and  hard- 
knuckled  men  at  the  polls,  could  not  be  expected 
to  yield  their  convictions,  and  change  their  votes, 
for  a  deluge  of  clapperclaw.  It  was  but  a  truism 
of  common  sense,  that  self-respecting  men  any- 
where would  not  tolerate  such  methods  of  ap- 
proach. The  abolitionists  themselves  never  would 
have  done  it.  The  reformers  would  not  do  it. 
Nobody  would  do  it.  Nothing  but  fanatical  pas- 
sion could  make  such  an  exorbitant  demand  on 
human  nature.  In  asserting  that  demand,  fanati- 
cal passion  was  puerile. 

As  practical  men,  therefore,  the  reformers  de- 
nounced the  policy  of  invective  as  one  which, 
seconded  by  that  of  the  resistants  at  the  opposite 
extreme,  blocked  up  every  avenue  to  emancipation 
except  the  via  mala  of  civil  war.  Thus  they  looked 
at  it  as  a  question  of  policy.  Looking  at  it  as  a 
question  of  principle,  they  could  not  help  seeing, 
that  to  suspend  on  such  a  policy  the  success  of  a 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      199 

great  humanitarian  revolution,  and  the  peace  of 
a  great  nation,  and  the  liberty  of  a  great  race,  was 
a  crime  against  the  civilization  of  the  world. 
Looking  now  at  the  grim  history  of  the  end,  who 
was  right? 

In  any  aspect  of  the  case,  the  vituperative  fero- 
city of  the  destructives  could  not  fail  to  repel  from 
them  the  tastes  and  the  convictions  and  the  good 
sense  of  an  educated  and  dispassionate  clergy.  As 
gentlemen,  as  wise  men,  as  patriotic  men,  as  Chris- 
tian men,  they  could  not  seek  such  an  alliance. 
What  for,  they  asked  again,  shall  we  do  this  great 
folly?  The  two  wings  of  antislavery  sentiment 
must  have  parted  asunder  for  this  cause  alone,  even 
if  there  were  none  more  sacred. 

4.  But  there  was  a  cause  more  sacred.  The 
reformers  believed,  as  many  of  the  destructives 
did  not,  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  divine  origin  of  the  Christian  Church.  It 
has  been  the  misfortune  of  the  cause  of  liberty, 
the  world  over,  to  attract  to  its  support  men  who 
have  been  more  hostile  to  Christianity  than  to 
tyranny.  Such  was  the  fate  of  American  anti- 
slavery  as  represented  by  the  abolitionist  wing  in 
the  controversy. 

The  abolitionists  welcomed  to  their  fellowship, 
and  in  part  to  their  leadership,  men  and  women 
whose  chief  resources  in  debate  were  denuncia- 
tions of  the  Mosaic  institutions  and  the  teachings 
of  St.  Paul.  Some  of  them  were  expert  in  their 
flings  at  Him  whose  name  is  above  every  name. 


200  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

They  shocked  our  most  sacred  sensibilities.  They 
travestied  our  supreme  hopes  for  ourselves  and  fur 
the  world. 

Not  all  of  the  abolitionists  were  of  thiv3  character. 
William  Jay  was  not :  Arthur  and  Lewis  Tappan 
were  not.  Indeed,  a  marked  distinction  grew  up 
between  the  abolitionist  platform  of  Boston  and 
that  of  New  York  —  the  latter  being  much  less 
given  to  outrage  of  Christian  convictions.  Long 
before  the  war,  the  distinction  grew  to  alienation. 
The  Tappans,  William  G.  Burney,  the  "  Free-soil " 
candidate  for  the  Presidency  of  the  United  States, 
and  others  of  that  ilk,  could  not  work  with  the 
leaders  of  the  Boston  platform  any  more  genially 
than  the  New-England  clergy  could.  Each  wing 
had  its  separate  organ.  "  The  Emancipator  "  and 
"  The  Liberator "  represented  policies  as  wide 
apart  almost  as  the  poles. 

But  geograpliical  locality  compelled  the  New- 
England  clergy  to  deal  chiefly  with  the  abolition- 
ists of  Boston,  not  with  those  of  New  York.  In 
Massachusetts  they  encountered  the  anti-Christian 
type  of  abolitionism,  in  its  most  virulent  form.  It 
infected  weak  ones  in  our  churches.  Under  the 
advice  of  its  apostles,  they  were  enticed  into  faith- 
lessness to  their  Christian  vows.  We  were  com- 
pelled to  perform  a  duty  which  is  the  most  painful 
one  devolving  on  a  Christian  pastor,  —  to  subject 
to  discipline  men  of  whose  conscientiousness  we 
had  no  more  doubt  than  of  our  own.  We  must 
do  it,  or  officially  connive  at  treachery  to  our  sacred 
Scriptures  and  the  ordinances  of  Christ. 


Neiv-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      201 

The  collision  concerned  no  question  of  abstract 
dogma.  If  it  had,  our  duty  might  have  been  the 
same.  But  it  did  not.  It  came  home  to  us  in  the 
most  hallowed  duties  of  Christian  fellowship.  We 
felt  the  shock  of  it  in  our  assemblies  for  social 
prayer  and  at  the  Lord's  Supper.  We  were  in- 
truded upon  by  some  of  the  leaders  of  the  reform, 
who  came  into  our  meetings  to  tempt  away  from 
us  beloved  members  of  our  churches.  Tracts  ca- 
lumniating the  Bible  and  the  Church  were  put  into 
the  hands  of  our  children,  and  circulated  in  our 
Sunday  schools.  What  could  we  do  ?  Should  we 
have  sat  idle  ?  Should  we  have  taken  the  intruders 
by  the  hand,  and  bade  them  God-speed  ?  We  did 
not  so  read  our  commission  from  our  Lord. 

Yet  it  is  due  to  honest  history  to  say  that 
Wendell  Phillips  was  not  understood  to  ajDprove 
the  antislavery  assaults  upon  the  Scriptures.  The 
clergy  had  no  more  bitter  foe  than  he ;  but  of  the 
Word  of  God,  he  was  said  to  be  a  reverent  believer. 
Doubtless  there  were  many  others  less  eminent 
among  the  abolitionists  of  New  England  who 
agreed  with  him  in  that  respect. 

But  we  were  not  tempted  to  trust  him  as  a 
Christian  leader  of  a  great  reform,  nor  was  our 
respect  for  him  as  a  Christian  man  increased  by 
such  occurrences  as  the  following.  On  a  memor- 
able occasion,  he  was  indulging  in  his  usual  tirade 
against  men  and  institutions  and  States  in  general. 
Massachusetts  came  in  for  her  full  share  of  his 
abuse.     He  took  up  the  formula  which  the  mem- 


202  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

ory  of  tlie  fathers  ought  to  have  made  sacred  on 
his  lips,  "  God  save  the  Commonwealth  of  Massa- 
chusetts ! "  By  interpolating  the  most  vulgar  of 
the  profane  words  which  one  hears  in  the  slums 
of  Boston,  he  transmuted  it  into  an  execration  of 
his  native  State.  We  did  not  follow  him  as  a 
model,  either  in  religion  or  good  taste.  Ought  we 
to  have  done  so  ?  Should  the  reverend  clergy  of 
Boston  have  imitated  him  in  their  next  reading 
of  the  governor's  proclamation  of  a  day  of  thanks- 
giving? We  did  not  so  interpret  our  ordmation 
vows. 

Men  whose  tastes  craved  such  things,  and  whose 
religion  approved  them,  were  numerous  enough  on 
the  platform  of  abolition  in  New  England,  to  give 
coloring  to  the  policy  represented  there.  To  this 
day,  all  over  the  South,  the  name  of  "abolitionist" 
is  the  synonym  of  every  most  virulent  type  of  infi- 
del and  scoffer.  A  reform,  like  a  man,  is  known 
by  the  company  it  keeps. 

The  clergy  could  not  join  hands  with  such  men 
without  treachery  to  Christ.  They  could  not  form 
alliance  with  even  the  nobler  class  of  the  destruc- 
tives without  lending  the  sanctity  of  their  profes- 
sion to  the  moral  support  of  other  men,  whom  they 
believed  to  be  enemies  of  their  Lord.  They  were 
but  human  if  they  felt  on  personal  grounds,  also, 
that  it  was  an  insult  to  ask  it  of  them.  Whatever 
other  men  might  think  of  them,  they  respected 
themselves.  They  revered  their  calling.  When 
men  came  to  them,  seeking  their  fellowship,  and, 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.      203 

at  the  same  time,  branding  the  Church  of  Christ 
as  the  "  brotherhood  of  thieves,"  and  the  "  spawn 
of  hell,"  humility  was  not  just  then  the  chief  of 
their  graces.  It  would  have  been  a  dishonor  to 
them  if  it  had  been.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
human  nature  in  Christian  ministers,  and  well  is 
it  for  them  and  for  truth  that  it  is  so. 

But,  in  the  historical  juncture  now  under  review, 
necessity  laid  an  embargo  on  their  fellowship  with 
the  destructives.  There  was  no  common  ground 
on  which  men  who  believed  first  in  Christianity, 
and  then  in  civil  liberty,  could  even  carry  on  dis- 
cussion very  freely  with  men  who  believed  first  in 
civil  liberty,  and  in  Christianity  not  at  all,  and 
whose  destructive  appetite  was  so  voracious  for 
sacred  things.  Two  or  three  fragments  of  history 
will  give  a  picture  of  the  times.  After  the  lapse 
of  thirty  years,  I  claim  for  them,  not  a  literal,  but 
a  substantial,  accuracy.  If  they  err,  it  is  rather 
within  than  beyond  the  truth. 

Once  upon  a  time  we  made  respectful  mention 
of  Moses,  as  authority  for  the  toleration  of  organic 
WTongs.  The  only  reply  we  got  was,  "  So  much 
the  worse  for  Moses,  then."  Again,  we  reverently 
quoted  St.  Paul,  in  proof  of  exceptional  cases  in 
which  the  legal  ownership  of  a  slave  might  not  be 
the  "sum  of  all  villanies."  The  rejoinder  was 
flung  contemptuously  in  our  faces,  "  Who,  pray,  is 
St.  Paul  ?  "  We  were  innocent  enough  to  recall 
with  reverence  the  words  of  our  Lord,  "I  have 
many  things  to  say  unto  you,  but  ye  can  not  bear 


204  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

them  now ; "  and  we  were  about  to  ask  whether 
the  principle  of  reserve  of  truth,  in  consideration 
of  the  infirmities  of  men,  might  not  possibly  admit 
of  a  broader  application.  But  the  autocrat  of  the 
platform  thundered  in  reply,  "Reserve  of  truth 
about  slavery,  by  God  or  man,  is  the  policy  of 
hell."  Once  more  we  ventured  to  cite  the  silence 
of  the  Master  upon  Roman  slavery,  as  possibly 
instructive  to  later  times.  But,  before  we  had 
finished  our  story,  the  war-whoop  came  back,  "  If 
Jesus  Christ  was  tolerant  of  slavery,  then  down 
with  Jesus  Christ ! "  And  —  could  it  be  that  we 
heard  aright?  —  the  voice  Avas  the  voice  of  a 
woman ! 

What  could  we  do  ?  The  hypothetical  gauze  of 
such  flings  at  the  person  and  teachings  of  our  Lord 
could  not  conceal  their  venom.  They  were  blas- 
phemy to  our  ears.  They  made  the  whole  at- 
mosphere sulphurous.  Reverent  believers  in  the 
Scriptures  would  have  been  recreant  to  their  faith 
if  they  had  entered  into  alliance  with  men  who  so 
maligned  the  name  of  Jesus.  We  could  not  lift 
them  to  our  level  of  thinking ;  and  we  would  not, 
if  we  could,  descend  to  theirs.  What  for,  we 
asked  again,  should  we  commit  such  sacrilege? 

5.  Added  to  these  causes  of  alienation  between 
the  abolitionists  ana  the  clergy  was  another.  It 
was  not  good  policy  for  the  religious  men  of  New 
England  to  act  in  alliance  with  the  extremists, 
even  if  on  other  grounds  it  had  been  possible. 
Bear  with  the  word  "  policy  "  a  moment.     Prac- 


Neiv-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery.     205 

tical  men  in  a  great  reform  aim  at  practical  results. 
They  are  not  content  with  blurting  out  their  say. 
They  aim  so  to  put  things  with  such  alliances  of 
auxiliary  opinion  as  to  gain  their  object.  They 
seek  to  allay  prejudices,  to  convince  opponents,  to 
win  over  dissenters,  to  convert  wrong-doers.  It 
is  one  thing  to  do  this :  it  is  a  very  different  tiling 
to  explode  opinions  from  the  platform  in  sound 
and  fury.  The  luxury  of  doing  good  is  in  the  one, 
the  luxury  of  oppugnation  in  the  other. 

The  New-England  churches  were  made  up  of 
practical  men.  Their  clergy  contained  few  men 
to  whom  the  luxury  of  oppugnation  was  a  neces- 
sity. They  had  access  to  the  Southern  religious 
mind  through  community  of  religious  faith.  Sev- 
eral great  Christian  denominations  bound  the  two 
sections  of  the  country  together.  For  once  and  a 
half  the  lifetime  of  a  generation,  good  men  at  the 
South  were  open  to  conviction  on  the  slavery  ques- 
tion, if  approached  in  a  sensible  way  by  good  men 
at  the  North.  The  clergy  of  the  North  were  not 
willing  to  sacrifice  that  hold  upon  the  Southern 
conscience  by  affiliation  with  extremists.  They 
ought  not  to  have  been  so.  It  was  good  policy,  in 
the  sense  of  sound  practical  wisdom,  to  hold  aloof 
from  men  of  destructive  aims  and  passions.  An 
alliance  with  such  men  was  too  heavy  a  load  to 
carry. 

Many  of  our  ministry  did  avail  themselves  of 
their  religious  hold  upon  the  South  as  long  as  it 
was  of  any  practical  use.     The  ablest  arguments 


206  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

in  defense  of  the  antislavery  cause  were  published 
by  them.  When  the  abolitionists  were  boiling  over 
in  the  frenzy  of  the  reform,  the  ministry,  like  sol- 
diers in  trenches,  under  fire  of  shot  and  shell  from 
both  sides,  were  calmly  laying  down  its  principles, 
and  building  up  its  proofs.  When  the  one  class 
were  denouncing  the  Bible  for  its  complicity  with 
slavery,  the  other  were  using  it  as  the  great  bul- 
wark of  freedom.  The  most  effective  arguments 
in  antislavery  literature  are  the  biblical  arguments, 
and  the  most  masterly  summary  of  them  in  the 
language  is  the  work  of  a  Northern  clergyman.^ 
It  was  published  chiefly  in  the  hope  of  reach- 
ing the  conscience  and  reason  of  the  Southern 
churches.  It  probably  had  ten  readers  at  the 
South  where  "The  Liberator"  had  one. 

As  a  matter  of  practical  wisdom,  it  would  have 
been  insane  for  such  men  as  the  author  of  that 
book  to  join  hands  Avith  abolitionists  of  the  school 
of  Wendell  Phillips  and  Mr.  Garrison.  The  Rev. 
Albert  Barnes  spoke  the  conviction  which  the 
policy  of  that  school  had  forced  upon  the  thought- 
ful Christian  men  of  the  time,  when  he  said,  "  If 
a  just  cause  could  be  killed  by  the  folly  of  its 
friends,  the  cause  of  African  liberty  would  have 
been  so  by  the  s^^irit  and  methods  of  the  aboli- 
tionists." 

A  single  reminiscence  of  the  civil  war  will  illus- 
trate this  fact  of  the  impolicy  of  alliance  with 
the   abolitionists  on  the  part  of  the   clergy.     A 

1  See  "Barnes  on  Slavery." 


New-England   Clergy  and  Antislaverg.      207 

Massachusetts  chaplain  in  the  war-time  was  under 
the  command  of  Gen.  Butler  at  Yorktown.  He 
was  ordered  to  take  possession  of  a  Presbyterian 
pulpit.  He  was  obliged  to  spend  a  half-day,  more 
or  less,  in  defending  himself  from  the  charge  of 
infidelity.  "  Where  are  you  from  ?  "  —  "  From  Mas- 
sachusetts."—  "  Doesn't  Garrison  live  in  Massachu- 
setts? Theodore  Parker  —  isn't  he  in  Massachu- 
setts? Are  they  not  Congregationalists,  as  you 
are  ?  Do  you  come  here  from  red-handed  fellow- 
ship with  the  men  who  have  brought  all  this  trou- 
ble upon  us,  to  preach  to  us  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ  ?  "  Such  was  the  animus  of  the  colloquy. 
It  illustrates  how  ponderous  was  the  load  of  ob- 
loquy which  a  clergyman  had  to  carry,  if  he  was 
tainted  with  suspicion  of  fellowship  with  the  aboli- 
tionists of  Boston.  To  the  Southern  religious 
mind,  they  represented  the  extreme  type,  not  only 
nor  chiefly  of  hostility  to  slavery,  but  of  more 
venomous  hostility  to  Christianity  itself. 

On  all  the  grounds  here  considered,  the  two 
classes  of  antislavery  men  noAV  under  review 
parted  by  an  intense  and  unconquerable  repulsion. 
They  could  not  do  otherwise.  There  were  no 
moral  affinities  which  could  outweigh  these  anti- 
pathies. The  poles  of  an  electric  battery  are  not 
more  repellent  and  mutually  destructive.  Which 
was  right,  ultimate  history  must  determine.  But 
right  or  wrong  on  either  side,  the  two  could  not 
amalgamate.  Nor  was  there  any  vinculum  strong 
enough  in  fiber  to  hold  them  together,  even  as  dis- 


208  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

tant  allies.  They  sprang  asunder  with  irresistible 
rebound.  The  lines  of  their  divergence  were  like 
those  of  an  hyperbola,  diverging  now,  and  diver- 
ging for  ever. 

So  far  as  the  attitude  of  the  clergy  had  the  look 
to  a  superficial  observer  of  complicity  with  slavery, 
or  indifference  to  the  outrage  it  inflicted  on  the 
rights  of  man,  it  was  only  in  the  seeming.  It  was 
a  repetition  of  the  social  phenomenon  which  has 
so  often  overclouded  the  history  of  liberty,  —  that 
thoughtful  reformers  are  outrun  and  overborne  by 
passionate  reformers.  Men  of  passion  in  such  a 
conjunction  of  elements  have  the  advantage  over 
men  of  reason.  Reason  argues :  passion  storms. 
Reason  persuades:  passion  denounces.  Reason 
wins :  passion  drives.  Reason  builds :  passion 
burns.  If,  then,  religion  happens  to  be  brought 
into  the  conflict,  it  is  very  apt  to  be  driven  to  the 
wall.  Liberty  and  Christianity  are  forced  into  an 
unnatural  antagonism.  The  best  that  good  men 
can  do  is  to  make  a  choice  of  evils.  In  their  resist- 
ance to  infidelity,  they  must  seem  to  be  enemies  to 
freedom.  Their  fidelity  to  God  takes  on  the  look 
of  treachery  to  men. 

Many  times  over  has  this  monstrous  alliance  of 
right  with  wrong  taken  place  in  the  history  of  civ- 
ilization. The  phenomenon  is  visible  to-day  in 
almost  every  country  in  Europe.  Religion  and 
despotism  seem  to  be  allies.  The  Church  supports 
the  re-actionary  State.  Hengstenberg  in  the  pul- 
pit joins  hands  with  Trendlenburg  at  the  bar,  and 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antislavery,     209 

both  bow  to  Bismarck  at  the  palace ;  and  all  con- 
spire against  nihilistic  reform. 

When,  anywhere,  the  critical  juncture  comes 
in  which  reform  under  infidel  leadership  demands 
the  sacrifice  of  religion  to  liberty,  there  can  be  no 
question  where  the  Christian  ministry  ought  to 
stand.  If  they  are  men,  they  will  be  true  first  to 
their  Christian  vows.  To  denounce  them  as  trai- 
tors to  the  rights  of  man  because  they  will  not  be 
traitors  to  the  ordinances  of  God,  is  not  only  a 
calumny.  It  is  proof  either  of  woful  prejudice  or 
of  densest  ignorance.  A  very  moderate  knowl-x 
edge  of  history  ought  to  suffice  to  save  any  fair- 
minded  man  from  such  a  blunder  in  public  affairs, 
and  such  cynicism  in  judgment  of  men. 

Such  was  at  times  the  enforced  attitude  of 
the  New-England  clergy  towards  the  infidel  wing 
of  antislavery  reformers.  Looking  back  now  to 
those  days  of  suspended  destiny,  we  claim  for  the 
churches  and  clergy  of  these  States,  that,  as  a 
body,  they  did  what  men  on  whom  rested  the 
responsibility  of  Christian  vows  ought  to  have 
done.  That  they  did  no  more,  was  due  to  tlie 
unfortunate  complications  of  the  reform  with 
infidelity.  But  we  claim,  that,  in  what  they  did 
do,  they  represented  the  vital  and  regenerative 
forces  which  finally  won  the  victory.  To  them, 
and  to  men  in  sympathy  with  them,  belonged  the 
moral  weight  and  momentum  which  carried  the 
nation  through  those  perilous  years,  and  through 
the  catastrophe  of  the  civil  war.     They,  and  that 


210  My  Study:  and  Otlier  Essays. 

portion  of  the  national  mind  which  thought  with 
them,  were  the  power  whose  decree  put  an  end  to 
slavery.  It  is  the  unthinking  mood  of  the  present 
to  laud  the  abolitionists  as  the  pioneers  and  the 
autocrats  of  the  antislavery  reform.  Not  so  will 
history  finally  write  that  page  in  our  annals. 

It  is  never  the  destructives  who  carry  to  its 
triumph  a  salutary  revolution.  It  is  never  they 
who  in  perilous  crises  save  the  State.  They  and 
the  resistants  create  such  crises.  The  State  lives 
through  their  disastrous  agitations  in  spite  of  both. 
Its  true  conservators  are  the  great  intermediate 
class  between  the  two  extremes.  These  are  led 
by  men  of  collected  and  balanced  minds,  men  of 
"  large  discourse,"  men  of  long  head  and  not  head- 
long in  opinions  and  in  policy.  The  real  pioneers 
of  the  antislavery  reform  came  over  in  the  "  May- 
flower." The  germs  of  its  triumph  circulated  in 
the  blood  of  the  Puritan  stock.  And  of  this  no 
other  single  representative  has  been  so  potent  all 
along  the  line  of  history  as  the  collective  mind 
of  the  New-England  churches  and  their  clergy. 

The  abolitionists  of  half  a  century  ago  were 
the  pioneers  of  the  antislavery  conflict,  only  as  the 
Jacobins  of  Paris  were  pioneers  of  the  French 
Republic  of  to-day ;  only  as  the  Carbonari  of  Italy 
were  the  pioneers  of  the  Italian  unity  originated 
by  Count  Cavour ;  only  as  the  nihilists  of  Russia 
are  the  pioneers  of  the  Russian  liberties  that  are 
to  be.  It  was  in  perfect  -keeping  with  his  natural 
affinities  that  Wendell  Phillips  left  behind  him,  as 


New-England  Clergy  and  Antidavery.      211 

the  last  significant  act  of  his  career,  a  justification 
of  the  nihilist  assassins  of  St.  Petersburg.  He 
had  been  a  nihilist  all  his  life.  Never  is  a  great 
nation  indebted  largely  to  such  men  for  its  liberty. 
It  is  a  falsification  of  history  to  advance  them  to 
the  front  rank  of  a  nation's  reformers,  and  to  revere 
them  as  the  rebuilders  of  the  national  life. 

The  time  for  writing  that  antislavery  chapter  of 
our  annals  has  not  yet  come.  When  it  does  come, 
the  historian  will  ascribe  the  overthrow  of  slavery, 
not  to  the  extremists  who  played  their  little  part, 
and  s^Doke  their  little  pieces,  on  the  stage,  and 
passed  away.  He  will  trace  it  to  the  statesmen, 
the  political  economists,  the  journalists,  the  histo- 
rians, the  poets,  the  novelists,  the  educators,  the 
scholars,  and  the  preachers,  who  have  been  the 
normal  leaders  of  the  thought  of  the  great  middle 
class.  They  are  the  men  wdio  have  held  this 
reform  in  even  balance  with  other  interests  of 
State  and  Church.  They  are  the  men  of  mental 
equipoise,  of  temperate  opinions,  of  patient  reason, 
of  wise  policies,  of  weighted  speech,  and  of  steady 
force.  Such  are  always  the  men  who  carry  in  their 
persons  the  destiny  of  nations. 

The  clergy  of  New  England,  from  John  May- 
hew  down,  have  been  profound  believers.  Theirs 
has  been  a  great  faith  in  great  ideas.  One  of  those 
ideas  has  been  the  identity  of  the  cause  of  human 
liberty  with  the  cause  of  Christ.  They  have  been 
at  the  direct  and  extreme  antipodes  to  one  of  the 
New-England  abolitionists,  wlio,  in  the  frenzy  of 


212  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

reform,  said,  "  We  must  get  rid  of  Christ."  Our 
ministry  have  never  for  an  hour  separated  these 
two  things,  —  Christianity  and  Freedom. 

When  Choiseul,  prime  minister  of  France  in  the 
time  of  our  revolution,  desired  to  know  the  temper 
of  the  American  people  respecting  independence 
from  Great  Britain,  he  gave  orders  that  extracts 
should  be  collected  from  the  sermons  of  the  New- 
England  pulpit.  He  would  know  what  teaching 
the  people  received  from  their  religious  leaders. 
Those  papers  are  still  to  be  found  among  the 
archives  of  the  French  Republic.  It  was  on  such 
testimony  that  he  advised  the  alliance  of  France 
w^ith  America.  He  found  our  people  instructed 
in  the  principles  of  free  government,  and  devoted 
to  the  cause  of  liberty.  They  were  the  pupils,  in 
this  respect,  not  so  much  of  their  statesmen  as  of 
their  educated  and  scholarly  ministry.  Indeed, 
it  is  interesting  to  see  the  evidences,  in  the  State 
papers  and  legislative  discussions  of  those  days,  of 
the  indebtedness  of  our  statesmen  to  the  instruc- 
tions of  the  pulpit  under  which  they  had  grown 
up.  Choiseul  trusted  both  the  statesmen  and  the 
j)eople  for  the  sake  of  their  religious  teachers. 
"  Like  priest,  like  people,"  was  the  proverb  of  his 
nation. 

The  same  trust  has  been  deserved  by  the  New- 
England  clergy  to  this  day.  They  have  never 
been  false  to  their  inheritance.  They  have  been 
reformers  without  being  fanatics.  They  have 
been   advanced   thmkers  without  being   destruc- 


New-England   Clergy  and  Antislavery.      213 

tives.  They  have  been  men  who  could  build  the 
new  without  ruin  to  the  old.  They  have  held 
their  own  valiantly  among  the  elect  spirits  of  all 
ages,  on  the  side  of  right,  of  fi:eedom,  of  progress, 
and  of  God. 


xvn. 

MASSACHUSETTS  AND  THE  QUAKERS. 

It  is  an  old  story,  but  it  needs  revision.  We 
are  accustomed  to  excuse  the  action  of  Massachu- 
setts in  that  business  of  the  Quakers,  on  the  ground 
that  she  was  fully  abreast  with  the  age,  and  by  some 
paces  beyond  it,  in  the  humaneness  of  her  legisla- 
tion. But  this  is  not  all.  A  careful  investigation 
of  the  case  discloses  other  grounds,  which  would 
have  made  it  seem  an  anomaly  to  the  judgment  of 
the  age  if  Massachusetts  had  not  hanged  such 
Quakers  as  she  had  to  deal  with. 

One  ground  of  her  defense  is  the  unique  tenure 
by  which  the  Colony  held  their  ownership  of  the 
territory.  They  held  it,  not  by  royal  patent  alone. 
That  might  have  given  to  others  the  same  right 
that  they  had  to  a  local  habitation  and  to  civil 
rights  here.  They  held  it  by  individual  and  col- 
lective purchase.  Their  charter  confirmed  in  un- 
equivocal terms  the  right  they  had  in  common  law 
to  say  who  should,  and  who  should  not,  set  foot  on 
the  soil.  It  made  that  right  the  full  equivalent 
of  individual  ownership,  not  merely  the  right  of 
political  sovereignty.  Every  rod  of  land  covered 
by  their  charter,  they  held  by  the  same  tenure  by 
which  a  man  owned  his  door-yard. 

2M 


Massachusetts  and  the  Quakers.  215 

Every  man's  house  is  his  castle.  He  has  the 
right  to  eject  from  the  lands  covered  by  his  title- 
deeds  any  intruder  thereon.  If  he  says  the  word, 
the  trespasser  must  go.  If  the  unwelcome  guest 
refuses  to  obey  the  order,  the  owner  has  the  right 
to  use  so  much  of  personal  force  as  may  be  neces- 
sary to  rid  his  property  of  the  nuisance.  Law  is 
not  nice,  and  was  not  then,  in  estimating  the  rea- 
sons for  the  ejection.  With  reason,  or  without  rea- 
son, the  owner  might  remove  the  intruder  from  the 
premises.  That  a  man  had  red  hair,  or  wore  a 
beard,  was  reason  enough  if  the  owner  thought  so. 
Law  is  not  squeamish,  and  was  not  then,  in  meas- 
uring the  exact  degree  or  kind  of  force  used  in 
the  expulsion.  While  aiming  at  substantial  jus- 
tice, it  left  a  large  leeway  to  the  discretion  of  the 
proprietor  in  this  respect.  It  made  large  allow- 
ance for  passion  and  mistake  in  the  righting  of  a 
wrong.  It  did  not  hold  the  owner  to  the  bond  as 
severely  as  Portia  held  Shylock.  It  recognized  a 
right  in  the  matter,  which  must  somehow  be  vin- 
dicated, and  not  sacrificed  through  fear  of  hurting 
somebody. 

Such  was  law  as  applied  to  colonial  ownership 
of  the  land.  Our  fathers  held  the  streets  and 
commons  of  Boston  as  their  own  estate  as  sacredly 
as  Gov.  Winthrop  held  the  house  he  lived  in. 
This  ownership  by  the  body  politic  was  carried  so 
far,  that,  when  Judge  Sewall  wanted  to  build  an 
ell  seven  feet  square  to  his  house  on  the  present 
site  of  the  building  of  the  Massachusetts  Histori- 


216  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

cal  Society,  lie  was  obliged  to  ask  leave  of  the 
General  Court.  It  was  this  precise  and  sacred 
right  of  domain  that  the  Quakers  outraged.  They 
did  it  in  ways  the  most  offensive  that  could  be 
devised  to  the  stern  proprieties  and  the  sterner 
morals  of  the  Pilgrims. 

Who,  and  what,  were  the  colonial  Quakers  of 
those  days?  We  must  not  imagine  to  ourselves 
meek  and  saintly  men  and  women  in  modest  drab 
apparel  hanging  on  four  gibbets  on  Boston  Com- 
mon. They  were  not  such  men  as  William  Penn, 
and  such  women  as  Lucretia  Mott.  The  sect  was 
in  its  infancy;  hardly  that  —  it  was  in  embryo. 
Every  new  sect  is  at  first  composed,  in  part,  of 
men  whose  minds  move  in  tangents.  Eccentric 
men,  crotchety  men,  men  to  whose  vision  notliing 
has  two  sides,  are  apt  to  get  astride  of  a  new  thing 
in  religion  or  in  politics,  as  of  a  hobby-horse,  and 
to  ride  off  with  it  from  the  solid  globe  peopled  by 
sensible  men  into  the  boundless  spaces.  Such  men, 
too,  are  always  attracted  to  a  new  country.  Under 
the  influences  of  such  minds,  the  Quaker  fraternity 
in  Massachusetts  passed  its  embryonic  stage.  It 
was  not  nearly  so  maturely  developed  as  in  the  old 
country.  Fanaticism  overweighted  piety.  Eccen- 
tricity took  precedence  of  good  sense.  The  sect 
had  not  reached  the  age  of  respectability.  It  had 
not  acquired  that  position  in  the  world  wliich 
wealth  and  numbers  give,  and  which  in  every  reli- 
gious organization  bring  in  worldly  considerations 
to  balance  the  tendency  to  fanaticism.     The  four 


Massachusetts  and  the  Quakers.  217 

men  and  women  —  or  woman  rather,  for  there  was 
but  one  —  of  whom  the  Colony  rid  itself  so  tragi- 
cally, were  people  who,  in  the  name  of  conscience 
and  the  "  divine  light,"  outraged  the  laws  of  de- 
cency and  morality.  They  need  the  mantle  of 
charity  more  than  Massachusetts  does,  and  they 
deserve  it  less. 

It  goes  against  the  grain  of  something  in  our 
better  nature,  to  admit  the  plea  of  conscience  in 
their  behalf.  A  good  conscience  is  good  sense. 
When  it  is  the  voice  of  God,  it  speaks  with  dig- 
nity and  self-possession.  It  is  perilous  to  train  the 
public  conscience  or  one's  own  to  shield  a  thing 
which  the  common  sense  of  mankind  can  not  re- 
spect. The  world  is  very  keen  in  knowing  when 
to  spell  the  word  with  a  large  "  W."  Men  vener- 
able for  conscience'  sake  do  not  tramp  naked 
through  the  streets  at  mid-day.  Saintly  women 
do  not  march  unclothed,  yet  unblushing,  up  and 
down  the  broad  aisles  of  churches  at  the  hour  of 
public  worship.  Even  the  dying  words  of  "  mar- 
tyrs "  ought  not  to  pass  for  much  when  they  suf- 
fer for  shameless  deportment.  Mary  Dyer  on  the 
scaffold  is  a  sad  spectacle,  but  not  a  respectable 
one.  We  can  not  weep  a  great  while  at  her 
saintly  words. 

Yet  this  was  the  style  of  Quaker  which  the 
magistrates  of  Massachusetts  had  to  deal  with. 
A  very  different  sort  of  being  evidently  from 
Benjamin  Franklin  and  George  Fox.  To  hang 
him  was  not  well ;  but,  under  the  circumstances, 
his  resolve  to  be  hanged  was  worse. 


218  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

Another  fact  which  has  seldom  received  the 
weight  which  it  deserves,  is  that,  as  it  respects  the 
plea  of  conscience,  the  magistrates  stood  on  ground 
at  least  as  lofty  as  that  of  the  Quakers.  The  scru- 
ples of  the  one  were  as  worthy  of  respect  as  those 
of  the  other.  Both  lived  in  an  age  of  twilight. 
Each  party  regarded  the  other  as  advocates  of  pes- 
tilent beliefs  and  damnable  practices.  The  con- 
science of  each  denounced  the  other  in  the  name 
of  God.  The  Quaker  obeyed  his  "  inner  light :  " 
the  magistrate  obeyed  his  oath.  Looking  at  the 
conflict  at  its  worst  for  the  case  of  the  government, 
it  was  an  action  of  "  Conscience  versus  Conscience." 
If  the  recusants  committed  a  venial  offence  in  their 
resistance  to  the  State  under  stress  of  conscience, 
an  equal  stress  of  conscience  must  relieve  the 
State  also  with  equal  reason.  In  the  court  of 
conscience,  we  can  discern  only  an  immovable 
body  in  the  pathway  of  an  irresistible  force.  Who 
shall  give  a  verdict?  If  the  execution  of  the 
Quakers  was  murder,  their  resolve  to  be  executed 
was  suicide.  What  is  the  moral  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  ? 

But  the  contestants  for  conscience'  sake  were 
not  equal.  They  did  not  stand  on  common  ground 
in  asking  for  the  verdict  of  mankind.  The  State 
represented  the  moral  convictions  of  the  age.  She 
was  supported  by  the  common  conscience  of  the 
world.  Numbers  do  not  make  a  right,  but  they 
do  palliate  a  wrong.  The  State  had  the  moral 
authority  of  numbers  at  her  back.     She  was  ex- 


Massachusetts  and  the   Quakers.  219 

eciiting  tlie  ancient  laws  of  England.  Those  laws 
she  had  not  originated,  but  inherited.  She  contin- 
ued a  policy  which  the  ablest  statesmen  and  the 
wisest  jurists  of  the  past  had  created  for  the  safety 
of  public  order.  Till  then,  nobody  had  ventured 
to  question  its  rectitude  or  its  necessity.  The 
recusants  represented  a  novelty  in  government, 
and  a  frenzy  in  religion.  They  defied  the  laws  of 
morality  as  enacted  in  all  civilized  lands  and  times. 
They  claimed  the  right  to  do  it  in  defiance  of  law 
of  ancient  usage,  and  of  the  moral  sense  of  nations. 

Under  these  conditions,  we  claim,  that,  in  the 
court  of  conscience,  the  two  contestants  were  not 
equals.  The  State  was  morally  the  superior.  She 
anticipated  in  her  final  action  the  jurisprudence  of 
enlightened  nations  down  to  our  own  time.  She 
was  in  the  same  dilemma,  in  kind,  in  which  the 
United-States  Government  now  is  in  the  solution 
of  the  Mormon  problem.  She  defended  that  which 
the  common  sense  of  the  world  now  defends  as 
essential  to  the  well-being  of  society,  the  qualms 
of  fanatical  consciences  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing. With  these  accompaniments  as  a  frame- 
work, the  "  murder "  of  the  Quakers  is  a  less 
repulsive  picture  than  their  "  suicide." 

Another  fact  pertinent  to  the  matter  is,  that, 
when  the  law  of  banishment  was  enacted,  the 
Commonwealth  did  not  mean  to  execute  it.  It 
was  the  explosion  of  a  blank  cartridge.  Until  the 
time  of  that  tilt  with  the  offending  Quakers,  the 
threat  of  legal  penalty  had  been  sufficient  to  rid 


220  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

the  colony  of  such  nuisances.  English  precedents 
had  placed  many  penal  statutes  on  record,  which 
were  meant  as  threats  only.  Nearly  two  hundred 
and  fifty  crimes  were  then  by  English  law  punish- 
able with  death,  not  half  of  which  probably  ever 
resulted  in  the  execution  of  the  penalty.  True, 
it  is  not  good  government  to  enact  laws  to  be  a 
dead  letter;  but  such  was  the  usage  of  the  age. 
In  Massachusetts  it  had  not  worked  badl}^  Other 
men  had  been  exiled;  and,  when  the  State  told 
them  to  go,  they  went.  Other  impracticable  con- 
sciences had  been  banished  for  the  peace  of  the 
infant  nation ;  and,  when  told  that  they  were  not 
wanted  here,  they  went  where  they  were  wanted. 
Roger  Williams,  under  sentence  of  exile,  migrated 
over  the  State-line  into  Rhode  Island;  and  he 
stayed  there.  All  the  experience  which  up  to 
that  time  our  fathers  had  had,  with  delinquents 
of  tangential  minds  and  crotchety  conscience,  had 
been  with  men  and  women  who  had  not  thought 
it  worth  wliile  to  defy  the  whole  artillery  of  the 
State  for  the  hum  of  the  "  bee  in  their  bonnets." 

Other  such  laws  remained  a  score  of  years  on 
the  statute-books  without  a  solitary  execution.  A 
law  was  passed,  that,  for  certain  offenses,  the  cul- 
prit should  have  his  tongue  bored  tlu'ough  with  a 
hot  iron.  The  fathers  had  a  great  many  irons  in 
the  fire,  but  that  iron  was  never  once  withdrawn. 
The  threat  sufficed.  So  they  expected  the  law 
against  Quakers  to  work,  and  with  good  reason. 
Neither  government  nor  people  desired  to   hang 


Massachusetts  and  the  Quakers,  221 

a  Quaker.  They  were  not  affectionately  fond  of 
Quakers,  but  neither  were  they  ferociously  fond 
of  hanging  Quakers.  They  did  not  take  kindly 
to  the  Quaker  sect,  nor  to  its  notions  of  social 
decency;  but  as  little  did  they  take  thirstily  to 
the  business  of  the  scaffold  in  social  discipline. 

In  picturing  the  scene,  therefore,  of  the  four 
gibbets  on  Boston  Common,  we  must  not  fancy 
that  we  see  a  crowd  of  sanctimonious  Puritans 
exulting  with  nasal  psalmody  in  the  sufferings  of 
meek  and  godly  offenders.  There  was  no  such 
thing.  Our  fathers  were  there  in  no  bloodthirsty 
spirit.  They  did  not  visit  upon  helpless  victims 
a  malign  authority.  They  did  not  even  go  out  of 
their  way  to  seek  occasion  for  the  execution  of  the 
law.  On  the  contrary,  they  did  every  thing  in 
their  power  to  avoid  it  as  a  misfortune.  They 
reasoned,  they  pleaded,  they  coaxed,  they  preached, 
they  exhorted,  they  threatened,  they  expostulated, 
they  prayed,  they  tried  silence,  they  tried  time,  they 
appointed  a  fast-day,  they  consulted  the  clergy, 
they  took  counsel  of  the  judges,  they  sought 
wisdom  from  the  wisest  men  in  England,  they 
summoned  the  General  Court,  before  they  would 
give  to  the  refractory  and  defiant  Quakers  the 
doom  they  sought.  When  at  last  the  tragic  end 
came,  both  Government  and  people  were  heartily 
tired  of  the  whole  business.  If  they  could  have 
begun  it  with  the  experience  with  which  they 
ended,  the  deed  never  would  have  been  done. 
"We   desire  their  life  absent,  rather  than  their 


222  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

death  present,"  said  the  magistrates ;  and  the  peo- 
ple responded,  "So  say  we  all."  On  this  point, 
there  were  not  two  opinions  in  the  whole  colony. 

But  the  Quaker  of  colonial  Massachusetts  was 
an  anomalous  being.  Only  in  the  nickname,  and 
a  few  other  trifles,  did  he  resemble  the  clear- 
headed and  sound-hearted  "  Friend  "  of  our  times. 
He  was  a  monomaniac.  He  was  open  neither  to 
reason  nor  to  suasion.  He  yielded  to  neither 
threat  nor  promise.  He  lived  in  a  delirious  antag- 
onism to  other  men.  In  Shakspeare's  "Julius 
Caesar,"  Brutus  says  of  Cicero,  — 

"  He  will  never  follow  any  thing 
That  other  men  begin." 

Such  was  the  colonial  Quaker.  His  theory  of  the 
"  inner  light  "  made  every  man  his  own  God.  He 
had  visions  and  dreams  which  lifted  him  above  all 
law.  He  heard  voices  in  the  air,  and  saw  things 
uncanny  in  the  night-time.  What  other  men 
"  began,"  he  could  not  "  follow."  What  other 
men  would  not  begin,  he  was  very  apt  to  have  a 
revelation  from  heaven  that  he  must  begin.  A 
blissful  mania  for  minorities  possessed  him.  That 
other  men  took  off  their  hats  in  courtesy  to  a 
stranger,  was  reason  enough  to  him  for  keeping 
his  hat  on.  That  other  men  said  "You,"  was 
equivalent  to  a  divine  command  to  him  to  say 
"  Thou."  That  men  generally  wore  rolling  collars 
to  their  coats,  was  enough  to  make  it  a  sin  to  him 
to  wear  any  collar  at  all. 


Massachusetts  and  the  Quahers,  223 

The  world  is  large  enough  for  only  one  such 
man.  Two  of  them,  with  the  whole  planet  to 
themselves,  would  fight,  and  the  weaker  would 
get  the  worst  of  it.  Such  men  are  fanatics,  not 
of  the  colossal  type,  like  Ignatius  Loyola,  not 
even  of  the  terrible  and  malign  type,  like  Tor- 
quemada,  but  of  the  puny  sort,  like  our  wretched 
Freeman  of  Pocasset,  who  butchered  his  sleeping 
child  in  emulation  of  Abraham,  and  whom  we 
have  shut  up  in  a  madhouse  for  no  very  satisfac- 
tory reason,  except  that  we  do  not  know  what  else 
to  do  with  him.  Our  fathers  of  the  olden  time 
would  have  hanged  him.  Is  it  certain  that  they 
would  not  have  been  wiser  than  we?  The  plea 
of  insanity  for  every  abnormal  horror  which  human 
nature  perpetrates  in  its  freaks  of  vanity,  is  quite 
too  slippery  for  sensible  government.  The  halter 
is  less  so,  and  less  liable  to  abuse. 

Such  was  the  unreasoning,  somnambulistic  Qua- 
ker of  Massachusetts  in  the  colonial  age.  He  came 
to  Massachusetts,  not  because  he  had  any  business 
here,  but  because  he  was  told  to  stay  away.  One 
of  them  could  invent  no  excuse  for  coming  till  he 
saw  the  gibbet  awaiting  him  if  he  did  come.  His 
soul  hankered  after  the  service  of  God  in  an 
exalted  station.  He  longed  to  make  a  grand  spec- 
tacle of  his  mission,  even  though  it  should  be  given 
him  at  the  rope's  end.  Had  he  been  a  Frenchman, 
he  would  have  committed  suicide  by  a  leap  from 
the  summit  of  the  Tower  Vend6me.  The  world 
has  always  been  at  its  wits'  end  to  know  what  to 


224  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

do  witli  siicli  men.  They  are  not  downright  ma- 
niacs ,  they  are  not  imbeciles ;  they  are  too  old  for 
asylums  for  feeble-minded  children  ;  yet  they  are 
not  men  of  sense.  Unfortunately,  we  have  no 
half-way  refuge  between  the  asylum  and  the  scaf- 
fold. 

There  is  a  border-land  between  insanity  and 
crime  which  neither  our  medical  science  nor  our 
jurisprudence  has  yet  thoroughly  explored.  Clouds 
and  darkness  envelop  it.  The  most  accomplished 
experts  of  the  age  were  divided  in  opinion  as  to 
the  execution  of  Guiteau.  In  that  cloudland  the 
colonial  Quaker  roamed  and  dreamed.  The  au- 
thorities of  the  Commonwealth  had  too  many  other 
things  to  do  to  allow  them  to  solve  the  obscure 
politico-moral  problems  upon  which  the  culture  of 
our  own  age  is  yet  so  reticent. 

Martyrdom  unsought  and  for  a  great  principle, 
is  a  sublime  and  holy  thing.  It  deserves  monu- 
ments in  the  highways,  and  shrines  on  the  hills,  to 
which  pilgrims  shall  go  for  inspiration  and  prayer. 
But  martyrdom  invited  is  of  quite  another  sort. 
There  have  been  times  when  martyrdom  was  a 
fashion.  Men  and  women  fell  into  a  fi^enzy  about 
it,  and  sought  it  as  horses  are  said  to  rush  into  a 
burning  stable.  Some  minds  are  born  with  that 
kind  of  idiosyncrasy.  ''  There  are  ever  appearing 
in  the  world,  men  who,  almost  as  soon  as  they  are 
born,  take  a  bee-line  for  the  rack  of  the  inquisitor 
or  the  ax  of  the  tyrant."  Many  years  ago,  in  the 
old  days  of  slavery,  a  slave-insurrection  broke  out 


Massachusetts  and  the  QuaJcers.  225 

in  South  Carolina.  The  leaders  were  arrested  and 
hanged  by  the  dozen.  At  last  a  passion  for  the 
scaffold  grew  up  among  the  negroes.  They  in- 
formed falsely  against  themselves.  They  con- 
fessed in  the  face  of  a  proved  alibi.  Life  was  a 
feather  in  the  scale  against  the  drama  of  the  scaf- 
fold. The  masters  were  compelled  to  stay  the 
slaughter  of  their  human  chattels. 

Martyrdom  thus  sought  and  prayed  for,  and 
when  the  thing  in  dispute  is  the  pitiful  right  to 
outrage  the  common  decencies  of  life,  is  no  longer 
the  sacred  thing  which  history  calls  by  the  name. 
It  is  not  even  respectable  —  no  more  so  than  any 
other  kind  of  insane  delusion :  it  is  only  pitiable. 
If  it  is  not  insanity,  it  is  not  even  misfortune :  it 
is  a  crime.  The  judgment  of  the  world  ranks  it 
with  suicide.  Its  victims  by  ancient  law  were 
buried  at  cross-roads.  Such  was  the  "martyr- 
dom" of  the  Massachusetts  Quakers.  The  chief 
fault  of  the  colonial  government  was  not,  that  it 
executed  the  laws  of  the  land  against  them,  but 
that  it  was  not  wise  enough  to  let  them  alone, 
except  to  clothe  the  naked,  and  send  them  to  the 
lockup.  If  "  Punch  "  had  existed  then,  they  might 
have  been  safely  left  to  the  pillory  of  its  ridicule. 
It  is  an  error  to  dignify  such  indecencies,  when 
committed  in  the  name  of  conscience,  by  the  inflic- 
tion of  solemn  penalties.  The  only  penalty  they 
need  is  the  broad  laugh  of  common  sense. 

Under  all  the  provocations  which  the  colonists 
suffered,   the   public   opinion  through  the  whole 


226  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

transaction  was  averse  to  the  extreme  penalty  of 
the  law.  The  humane  sentiment  which  soon  after 
reformed  the  sanguinary  laws  of  England  in  the 
colony,  was  then  struggling  to  the  birth;  and  in 
the  House  of  Deputies  the  Act  against  the  Quakers 
was  carried  by  a  majority  of  one  only.  The  tem- 
per of  the  people  was  humane.  At  a  time  when 
the  penal  code  of  England  recognized  nearly  two 
hundred  and  fifty  capital  crimes,  that  of  Massa- 
chusetts counted  less  than  ten.  A  century  and  a 
half  later  Sir  Samuel  Romilly  said  of  the  code  of 
the  mother  country,  "  I  have  examined  the  codes 
of  all  nations,  and  ours  is  the  worst.  It  is  worthy 
of  the  Anthropophagi." 

Such  was  the  school  of  jurisprudence  in  which 
our  fathers  had  been  trained.  They  were  not  in 
spirit  a  persecuting  race  of  men.  Their  severity 
was  a  short-lived  experiment,  almost  the  last  wave 
of  intolerance  from  the  shores  of  England,  which 
expended  itself  in  Boston  in  but  four  cases  of 
execution.  The  law  which  made  Quakerism  a 
felony  remained  on  the  statute-books  of  England 
many  years  after  it  was  repealed  in  Massachusetts. 
New  England  has  often  been  contrasted  to  her  dis- 
advantage in  this  respect  with  the  Old  Dominion, 
as  if  all  the  mtolerance  of  the  country  was  con- 
centrated in  the  four  Eastern  colonies.  But  the 
Puritans  of  Massachusetts  had  repealed  the  laws 
against  the  free  exercise  of  religion  by  the  Quakers 
a  long  while  before  the  Cavaliers  of  Virginia  did  it. 

Why,  then,  did  Massachusetts  execute  the  an- 


Massachusetts  and  the  Quakers.  227 

cient  law  at  all  ?     A  fair  question,  and  quickly  an- 
swered.    She  was  weak,  and  in  peril.     This  is  the 
exiDlanation,  and  the  whole  of  it.     Like  other  weak 
powers  in  danger,  she  vaulted  into  the  extreme  of 
self-defense.     The  whole  business  was  the  work  of 
conscious  feebleness  in  an  emergency.     It  was  not 
yet  proved  that  the  Colony  could  live.     The  age 
was  one  of  eccentric  beliefs  and  abnormal  prac- 
tices.    All  the  religious  and  political  cranks  in  the 
kingdom,  as  is  usual  with  new  countries,  seemed 
to   gravitate  towards  New  England.     In  all  the 
colonies,  there  was  an  abnormal  proportion  of  dis- 
orderly elements.     Men  of  broken  fortunes,  fugi- 
tives from  creditors  and  from  justice,  abounded. 
When  to  these  were  added  emigrants  who  came 
with  fanatical  religious  ideas,  it  is  not  surprising, 
that,  to  thoughtful  minds,  the  danger  sometimes 
appeared  imminent  that  the  Colony  would  be  over- 
whelmed by  elements  not  in  sympathy  with  the 
objects  of  its  foundation.     In  dread  of  that  catas- 
trophe, some  had  already  begun  to  think  of  a  new 
migration,  they  knew  not  whither. 

Danger  from  the  savages  also  was  by  no  means 
obsolete.  King  Philip's  war  was  yet  to  come. 
The  firelocks  on  the  kitchen-walls  of  the  settlers 
had  had  no  time  to  become  rusty.  There  were 
outlying  settlements  remaining,  in  which  men  wor- 
shiped in  the  churches  on  the  Lord's  Day,  lean- 
ing on  their  muskets ;  and  hoed  their  corn  in  the 
spring,  and  gathered  in  their  crops  in  the  summer, 
with  muskets   loaded  and  primed  on  the  stumps 


228  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

not  yet  cleared  from  the  forest-soil.  Besides,  the 
old  generation  of  pioneers  were  gone.  Heroic 
men  and  more  heroic  women  had  passed  away. 
New-comers  felt  weakened  by  the  loss.  Gov. 
Winthrop  lay  in  what  is  now  King's-chapel  grave- 
yard. He  had  been  a  host  in  himself.  He  was  a 
foreseeing  man,  who  discerned  new  truths  in  their 
dawning,  and  whose  mind  was  inventive  of  expe- 
dients. Had  he  been  living,  the  Quaker  tragedy 
might  not  have  happened.  His  wise  and  balanced 
judgment  would  have  discovered  some  other  way 
of  extricating  the  State  from  its  dilemma. 

All  these  things  combined  to  deepen  the  sense 
of  insecurity  in  the  popular  mind,  and  specially  in. 
the  minds  of  the  magistrates  on  whom  the  respon- 
sibility for  the  public  safety  rested.  To  them  it 
seemed  of  prime  importance,  that  the  prestige  of 
law  should  be  kept  inviolate.  In  troublous  times, 
it  would  not  do  to  show  the  white  feather.  It  was 
not  safe  to  let  the  savages  of  one  continent,  and 
the  bedlamites  of  the  other,  know,  that,  when 
Massachusetts  made  up  her  mind,  she  did  not 
know  it.  The  suspicion  must  not  be  bruited,  that, 
when  she  expressed  her  mind  in  statute,  she  did 
not  mean  it,  or  dared  not  execute  it.  No:  this 
would  never  do. 

Gov.  Bradford  of  Plymouth,  in  the  infancy 
of  that  colony,  when  his  whole  force  of  fighting- 
men  was  reduced  to  fifty  against  the  five  thou- 
sand whom  the  Narragansetts  threatened  to  bring 
against  him,  sent  back  to  them  his  belt  filled  with 


Massachusetts  and  the  Quakers,  229 

powder  and  shot  in  response  to  their  challenge 
with  a  rattlesnake-skin.  The  same  policy  of  bra- 
vado may  well  have  prompted  the  magistrates  of 
Massachusetts,  a  generation  later,  to  put  on  stern 
faces,  and  stand  by  their  law  against  disturbers  of 
the  peace.  They  had  said  it,  and  the  world  must 
not  think  them  too  weak  or  too  timid  to  do  it. 
Weakness  in  an  emergency  struggling,  not  for 
life,  but  for  things  dearer  than  that,  was  at  the 
bottom  of  the  whole  sad  business. 

This,  at  least,  was  the  meaning  of  it,  as  it  seemed 
to  the  vigilant  judgment  of  those  who  must  bear 
the  responsibility  of  it  before  God  and  man.     Tak- 
ing all  things  into  account,  it  was  a  less  unworthy 
thing  to  do,  and  is  more  deserving  of  the  respect 
and  sympathy  of  mankind,  than  the  conduct  of  the 
Quakers  in  braving  the  law  and  the  public  senti- 
ment of  the  age.     It  is  time  that  history  should 
reverse  the  proportions  of  her  verdict.     She  should 
transfer  to  the  suffering  offenders  a  large  part  of 
the    censure   which    thus   far   Massachusetts   has 
borne   almost   alone.     Mr.  Bancroft   is  quite  too 
abject  in  his  apologies  for  the   colonial  govern- 
ment.    So,  it  is  respectfully  suggested,  was  the 
tone  of  the  "  confession  "  volunteered,  some  time 
ago,  to  a  Friends'  Meeting  by  some  of  our  good 
brethren  in  Maine.     That  confession  might  better 
have  read  in  this  wise:  "We  humbly  confess,  that, 
in  the  ancient  tilt  between  Puritanism  and  Quaker- 
ism, there  was  fault  on  both  sides ;  and,  as  it  was  a 
great  while  ago,  we  are  glad  to  believe  that  they 
have  made  it  up  before  this  time.'*  ' 


230  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

It  has  been  too  long  the  fashion,  with  a  class  of 
thoughtless  critics,  to  fling  at  the  Pilgrims  for  this 
Quaker  business  and  the  more  dismal  affair  at 
Salem.  That  their  fame  has  been  able  to  bear  so 
much  of  that  kind  of  criticism,  is  proof  that  mate- 
rial for  fair  censure  must  be  very  scant  in  their 
history.  The  fame  of  Greek  philosophers  and 
Roman  poets  and  English  statesmen  and  French 
scientists  could  not  have  borne  the  half  of  it. 
These  men  the  world  has  set  in  the  frame  of  the 
ages  in  which  they  lived,  and  judged  them  by 
the  temper  of  those  ages.  But  the  Pilgrims  have 
been  isolated  from  the  world  they  knew  and 
judged  by  the  illumination  of  times,  of  which,  with 
all  their  foresight,  they  never  dreamed.  It  is  time 
to  have  done  with  this.  Let  the  Pilgrims  have 
fair  play.  Set  them  in  the  place  where  their  des- 
tiny put  them,  and  judge  them  by  its  opportunities 
and  possibilities.  Their  descendants  have  no  fear 
of  the  result.     They  need  no  laudation  of  ours. 

As  soon  as  the  condition  of  the  colony  improved, 
and  the  public  safety  seemed  to  be  assured,  the 
laws  against  Quaker  immigration  became  a  dead 
letter.  They  died  out,  as  such  laws  have  commonly 
done,  because  nobody  cared  enough  about  them  to 
execute  them.  Persecuting  powers  commonly  be- 
come more  cruel  as  they  grow  stronger.  Not  so 
Massachusetts.  When  time  and  numbers  consoli- 
dated her  resources,  and  gave  her  the  conservative 
consciousness  of  strength,  she  grew  more  humane. 
The  cultured  instincts   of  her  religion    came   to 


Massachusetts  and  the   Quakers,  231 

the  surface,  and  diffused  .a  Christian  civilization 
through  her  institutions  and  social  customs.  She 
became,  without  exception,  the  most  enlightened 
and  liberal  government  in  the  world.  The  Quakers 
came  and  went  at  their  pleasure,  with  none  to 
molest  them  or  make  them  afraid.  And  such  is 
human  nature  in  Quaker  garb,  as  in  that  of  Cava- 
lier or  Roundhead,  that,  when  the  State  no  longer 
gave  them  the  dignity  of  the  scaffold,  they  did  not 
care  to  come  in  large  numbers ;  and  the  sect  has 
always  been  small  on  our  soil.  Cotton  Mather 
quaintly  told  the  denoHment  of  the  story.  "  Since 
our  Jerusalem  was  come  to  such  consistence,  that 
the  going  up  of  every  fox  would  not  break  down 
our  stone  walls,  who  has  ever  meddled  with  'em  ?  " 


XYin. 

DOES  THE  WORLD  MOVE? 

A  STORY  is  told  of  a  thrifty  old  lady  in  New 
York,  who  once  listened  to  a  colloquial  discussion 
of  the  merits  of  modern  progress.  At  the  close, 
she  summed  up  her  own  wisdom  on  the  subject 
by  observing,  "  For  my  part,  the  best  signs  I  see 
of  progress  are  two,  —  omnibuses  and  lucifer 
matches."  Had  she  put  it  thus,  Facility  of  travel 
and  the  preservation  of  fire,  she  would  have  been 
a  home-made  philosopher  of  the  materialistic  school. 
These  are  great  facts  in  modern  life.  Civilization 
owes  much  to  them. 

If  the  question  were  circulated  for  a  vote  in  an 
assembly  of  intelligent  men.  Is  the  human  race  on 
an  advance  rather  than  a  retreat  ?  nine  out  of  ten 
would  vote  in  the  affirmative,  and  would  give  in 
evidence  things  belonging  to  the  same  school  with 
the  omnibus  and  the  lucifer  match.  Material 
progress  is  sure  to  make  itself  heard  and  seen. 
The  rumbling  of  a  railroad  train  burdens  the  very 
night  air.  The  tramp  of  an  army  makes  the  earth 
tremble.  An  Armstrong  gun,  if  not  heard,  is 
heard  of,  around  the  globe.  Such  things  compel 
observation,    and   force    their   way   into    history. 

232 


Does  the  World  Move?  233 

They  often  crowd  out  of  sight  and  hearing  the 
silent  revolutions. 

Is  the  evidence  as  clear  that  there  are  silent 
revolutions  in  which  the  world  is  moving  to  the 
conquest  of  great  intellectual  and  moral  improve- 
ments ?  Is  man  on  a  line  of  march  forward  in  the 
realm  of  Ideas? 

I.  It  is  very  certain  that  the  time  lias  been  when 
the  world  did  advance  in  the  growth  of  great  ideas, 
which  we  of  to-day  inherit.  Wordsworth  said  that 
in  his  day,  ''  plain  living  and  high  thinking  "  were 
no  more;  but  they  had  been  in  better  times. 
History  has  stored  them  in  imperishable  records. 
The  Greek  idea  of  beauty,  for  example,  has  become 
the  world's  treasure.  It  will  never  grow  obsolete. 
The  Greek  idea  of  poetry  has  passed  into  all  sub- 
sequent literatures,  and  will  live  there  for  ever. 
Plato  and  Aristotle  to  this  day  are  the  two  foci  of 
all  the  philosophy  which  the  world  has  thought 
out.  So  much,  at  least,  the  past  has  conquered 
from  barbarism,  which  the  future  will  never  let 
die. 

Rome  also  had  her  mission  to  the  generations  of 
all  subsequent  time.  It  was  a  mission  of  ideas 
more  than  of  material  progress.  The  Roman  idea 
of  law  lives  in  all  the  jurisprudence  of  the  world, 
which  has  any  chance  of  perpetuity.  Its  ramifica- 
tions run  through  the  institutions  on  which  every 
great  national  Hfe  of  to-day  depends.  An  empire 
like  that  of  England  never  could  have  lived,  but 
for  Rome's  tribute  to  its  foundation  in  law  and 


234  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays, 

obedience  to  law.  The  Middle  Ages  would  have 
been  a  fatal  and  final  relapse  into  Vandalism,  but 
for  the  conservative  ideas  infused  into  them  by 
Roman  history. 

The  same  creative  idea  of  Law  was  the  thing 
which  made  possible  the  birth  of  the  American 
Republic.  To  Rome  as  a  republic,  herself  realiz- 
ing republican  institutions,  we  owe  very  little  in 
comparison  with  our  debt  to  Rome  the  empire, 
which  gave  solidity  to  law  as  a  power  capable  of 
ruling  a  world.  American  eloquence  from  the 
Revolution  down  has  been  adorned  with  a  great 
deal  of  flourish  over  the  Roman  and  Greek  democ- 
racies, but  it  is  surprising  how  little  our  fathers 
really  appropriated  from  the  ancient  stock  of  ideas. 
It  was  almost  nothing  worth  mentioning.  The 
ancient  democracy  was  not  the  modern  republic. 
The  real  power  from  antiquity,  which  built  the 
foundation  of  our  free  institutions,  was  the  mailed 
hand  of  Roman  law  which  pervaded  all  Roman 
history,  from  the  Tarquins  to  the  Caesars,  and 
which  grew  to  its  full,  athletic  muscle  in  the  best 
days  of  the  empire. 

The  critical  question  respecting  modern  progress 
is.  Has  it  any  thing  equal  to  that  of  ancient  times 
to  show  for  itself  in  the  world  of  ideas?  Is  it 
adding  any  thing  to  the  world's  stock  of  heroic 
and  immortal  thought  ?  A  railway  map  of  a  con- 
tinent is  a  grand  thing  to  look  at.  The  tramp  of 
a  million  armed  men  is  an  imposing  thing  to  hear. 
An  invisible  spirit  seems  to  live  in  a  telescopic  rifle 


Does  the  World  Move?  235 

which  kills  at  a  distance  of  a  mile.  But  these  are 
things  of  course,  in  a  world  so  full  as  this  of  mate- 
rial forces.  Such  forces  must  come  out  in  some 
such  marvelous  inventions.  They  do  not  symbol- 
ize the  ultimate  or  the  best  conquests  of  mind. 
What  is  a  minie-rifle  compared  with  the  Parthe- 
non? What  is  a  Pacific  railroad  by  the  side  of 
Homer's  Iliad?  What  is  the  army  of  Marshal 
von  Moltke  as  an  offset  to  the  Laws  of  Justinian  ? 

The  triumphs  of  material  progress  are  toys  and 
gewgaws  in  the  comparison  with  those  of  mind. 
The  true  welfare  of  nations  is  in  the  world  of 
Ideas.  Its  central  force  is  conscience.  "  The 
evolution  of  a  highly  destined  society  must  be 
moral.  It  must  run  in  the  grooves  of  the  celes- 
tial wdieels." 

II.  Have  we,  then,  any  thing  in  our  modern  civ- 
ilization which  can  rival  the  great  ideas  of  the  an- 
cient world  ?  Yes,  —  things  so  many  and  so  grand 
that  they  outweigh  all  the  past.  Yet  they  are  so 
inwrought  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  our  social 
life,  that  we  are,  for  the  most  part,  unconscious  of 
them.  The  rehearsal  of  them  seems  like  recount- 
ing a  string  of  truisms.  We  live  them  without 
knowing  it.  We  of  this  generation  have  been 
born  to  them :  we  know  no  other  way.  Yet  the 
most  of  them  and  the  best  are  mainly  the  growth 
of  the  last  three  hundred  years. 

One  of  these  formative  ideas,  on  which  modern 
society  is  built,  is  that  of  the  human  brotherhood. 
So  trite  is  it,  that  our  literature  indulges  in  a  great 


236  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

deal  of  cant  about  it.  But  men  do  not  cant  about 
ideas  that  have  nothing  grand  in  them.  This  idea 
to  the  ancient  world  was  as  completely  unknown 
as  the  American  continent.  One  of  the  silent 
revolutions  which  change  the  face  of  nations,  was 
that  in  which  the  fundamental  idea  of  society  was 
changed  from  the  state  to  the  family.  That  men 
of  all  races,  nations,  classes,  and  conditions  are 
brother  men,  each  one  responsible  for  all,  and  all 
for  each,  the  equal  children  of  one  household  whose 
Father  is  God,  is  a  theory  of  society  which  in  its 
fullness  has  been  the  growth  of  the  last  two  centu- 
ries. Now,  it  is  semi-barbarism  not  to  believe  it. 
To  go  back  of  it  in  legislation  is  like  reverting  to 
the  Chaldsean  astrology  in  place  of  the  astronomy 
of  Copernicus  and  Kepler.  That  astronomy  is  as 
likely  to  become  obsolete  in  our  observatories  as 
the  idea  of  brotherhood  in  our  legislation,  or  in 
our  unwritten  social  laws.  The  world  took  a  long 
stride  forward  when  this  idea  became  fixed  in  mod- 
ern jurisprudence. 

Another  of  the  creative  ideas  of  modern  life  is 
that  of  individual  liberty.  When  the  freedom  of 
class,  of  tribe,  of  nation,  of  race,  was  exchanged 
for  the  freedom  of  the  individual,  a  great  leap  was 
made  over  the  chasm  which  separates  the  ancient 
from  the  modern  world.  The  chief  reason  why 
our  fathers  found  so  little  in  the  institutions  of 
Greece  and  Rome  which  they  could  utilize  directly 
in  the  building  of  the  Republic,  was  that  the 
Greek  and  Roman  ideas  of  freedom  were  so  radi- 


Does  the  World  Move  ?  237 

cally  diverse  from  theirs.  Liberty,  to  the  ancient 
mind,  was  liberty  of  race,  or  nation,  or  tribe.  It 
involved  liberty  to  enslave  another  race.  England 
was  the  first  great  empire  which  recognized,  ever 
so  dimly,  the  right  of  the  individual  to  himself. 
It  was  never  formally  and  fully  enunciated  as  the 
cornerstone  of  government  till  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  in  1776,  proclaimed  that  all  men 
are  created  free,  and  have  the  right  to  life  and  lib- 
erty. Observe,  the  right  to  life  was  not  more 
sacred  in  their  theory  than  the  right  to  liberty. 
Imperfectly  as  the  fathers  realized  it  in  the  insti- 
tutions they  founded,  they  did  see  its  reality  in 
theory;  and  theirs  was  a  modern  discovery.  As  a 
practical  principle  of  government,  to  be  put  to  use 
in  the  construction  of  a  great  republic,  it  was  a 
new  idea.  The  democratic  idea  which  had  ger- 
minated long  before  in  the  forests  of  Germany  was 
not  this  American  idea. 

Our  fathers  left  it  for  this  generation  to  settle 
by  the  right  of  the  strongest,  the  question  of 
human  servitude  everywhere.  And  we  have  set- 
tled it  for  all  time.  Never  will  another  state  be 
founded  on  the  right  of  man  to  hold  property  in 
his  brother  man.  Never  will  another  great  war 
be  waged  for  the  principle  that  a  man  may  be 
owned  and  whipped  and  branded  and  bought  and 
sold  by  his  fellow  like  an  ox.  This  idea  of  indivi- 
dual liberty  is  fixed  in  the  law  of  nations  beyond 
the  reach  of  any  refluent  wave  of  barbarism. 

Kindred  to  this,  and  a  necessary  corollary  from 


238  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

it,  is  the  modern  idea  of  independence  in  religious 
belief.  It  has  l)ecome  a  truism  in  history,  that 
even  Puritan  faith,  so  stanch  and  true  to  liberty 
in  all  things  else,  could  not  see  the  logic  of  its 
own  principles  working  out  freedom  in  religion. 
Its  well-known  notion  of  religious  liberty  was  lib- 
erty to  believe  right.  To  believe  wrong,  was  a 
crime.  Liberty  to  believe  it,  was  anarchy.  It 
deserved  rather  the  scourge  and  the  branding-iron. 
That  the  civil  government  ought  to  punish  a  man 
for  believing  falsely,  was  as  plain  as  a  pike-staff  to 
them.  Why  is  it  not  as  plain  to  us  ?  Because  a 
new  and  original  idea  —  which,  perhaps,  John 
Barne veldt,  prime  minister  of  Holland,  was  the 
first  to  enunciate  in  its  completeness,  and  for 
which  in  part  he  paid  the  penalty  of  his  life — has 
now  become  the  common  property  of  the  age. 
How  trite  is  that  idea  to  us,  and  how  much  a 
thing  of  course !  Our  children  marvel  that  great 
men  and  good  men  could  ever  have  denied  it. 
That  their  own  ancestors  did  so,  has  about  the 
same  reality  to  them  as  that  their  ancestors  were 
cannibals.  They  are  horror-struck  at  Motley's 
story  of  the  Netherlands,  as  at  the  rage  of  maniacs. 
A  great  idea  is  fixed  in  history  when  children  are 
born  to  it,  and  can  think  no  otherwise. 

Following  in  the  train  of  the  ideas  already 
named,  and  in  necessary  alliance  with  them,  is  the 
modern  theory  of  the  elevation  of  woman.  Of 
slow  growth,  yet  as  sure  as  the  growth  of  a  coral 
continent,  and  as  lasting,  is  this  principle  of  our 


Does  the  World  Move  ?  239 

most  refined  and  purest  civilization.  Woman  suf- 
frage —  that  crowing  lien  — burlesques  and  retards 
this  reform  for  a  little  while ;  but  it  is  fast  accu- 
mulating its  trophies  in  the  higher  education  of 
woman,  in  the  recognition  of  her  rights  of  prop- 
erty, in  the  enlargement  of  the  range  of  her  indus- 
trial employments,  in  just  legislation  for  her  in  the 
laws  of  divorce,  in  her  special  pre-eminence  in 
social  charities,  and,  more  than  all  else,  in  the 
unwritten  social  law,  by  which  her  companionship 
with  man  is  established  without  statute  to  affirm 
it,  because  without  a  voice  denying  it. 

Yet  what  a  change  is  this  from  the  Roman  ideal 
of  woman  to  ours !  Imagine  such  an  institution 
as  Smith  College  in  the  Rome  of  the  Csesars ! 
Cicero  has  made  the  name  of  his  daughter,  Tullia, 
immortal  by  his  grief  over  her  death;  but  what 
do  we  know  of  Cicero's  wives  ?  Almost  nothing, 
except  that  he  divorced  them  both  by  his  own 
sheer  will.  What  immeasurable  progress  from  the 
status  of  the  wife  of  Augustus  Csesar  to  that  of 
the  wife  of  President  John  Adams,  or  the  wife 
of  President  Garfield !  From  woman  the  slave, 
to  woman  the  companion  of  man !  What  a  reach 
of  revolution  it  measures  !  And  from  the  Oriental 
notion  of  woman,  the  advance  is  beyond  measure. 
'A  Chinese  proverb  says,  "When  a  daughter  is 
born,  she  sleeps  on  the  ground.  She  is  incapable 
of  evil  and  of  good."  China  and  America  are  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  globe  in  more  ways  than  one. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  representative  ideas 


240  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

of  modern  life,  which  show  the  immensity  of  human 
j)rogress  in  the  world  of  mind.  Associated  with 
them,  or  corollaries  from  them,  are  many  others. 
They  are  such  as  the  recognition  of  the  freedom 
of  the  press  and  of  public  speech,  of  a  popular 
literature,  of  the  sacredness  of  human  life,  of  the 
criminality  of  war,  of  the  inferiority  of  a  military 
life,  of  the  murderous  character  of  the  duel,  of  the 
dignity  of  labor,  of  the  equal  claims  of  chastity 
upon  the  sexes,  of  reform  in  the  criminal  code,  of 
the  inhumanity  of  torture  in  courts  of  justice, 
of  the  reformatory  element  in  punishment,  of 
humanity  in  the  treatment  of  the  insane,  of  the 
right  of  animals  to  protection  from  cruelty,  of 
gentleness  in  family  government,  of  the  abolition 
of  brutality  from  public  schools  and  from  the 
discipline  of  armies  and  navies,  of  the  disgrace 
attached  to  the  drinking-usages  of  society,  of  the 
subjection  of  the  sale  of  intoxicating  drinks  to  law, 
of  the  subordination  of  wealth  to  character,  and 
of  manners  to  mind  in  estimating  the  worth  of  a 
man. 

To  these  should  be  added  those  germs  of  ideas, 
which  Hazlitt  calls  the  "tops  of  thoughts,"  now 
just  visible  above  the  surface  of  society,  and  pre- 
monitory of  the  reforms  of  the  coming  age.  These 
suggest,  among  other  things,  the  sure  approach  of 
a  more  equitable  balance  of  capital  and  labor,  the 
fixing  of  limits  to  the  accumulation  of  private 
property,  and  the  regulation  of  its  use  by  the 
principles  of  benevolence,  and  of  restrictive  legis- 


Does  the  World  Move?  241 

lation  against  the  monopoly  of  land.  They  indi- 
cate that  the  time  is  approaching  when  it  will  be 
a  personal  disgrace  to  a  man  to  be  possessor  of  a 
property,  the  magnitude  of  which  is  itself  evidence 
that  it  is  an  injustice  or  a  menace  to  the  common 
welfare. 

Here  is  a  resplendent  galaxy  of  ideas  which  light 
up  the  modern  firmament.  The  whole  heavens  are 
aglow  with  them.  They  prove  a  world  in  forward 
and  upward  movement.  The  clockwork  of  the 
sidereal  universe  is  not  more  certain.  They  are 
ideas,  also,  which  create  great  men  for  their  devel- 
opment. When  the  world  is  ripe  for  a  truth,  that 
truth  ripens  in  some  elect  mind,  one  or  more, 
whose  mission  it  is  to  tell  it.  Every  such  truth 
creates  its  own  prophet.  More  than  this :  it  makes 
all  men  great  who  accept  it,  by  the  use  of  that 
which  is  on  a  level  with  their  immortality. 

Great  formative  and  reformatory  ideas,  it  should 
also  be  observed,  once  born  into  the  world,  never 
die.  They  come  into  it  to  stay. ,  Power  can  not 
crush  them:  time  can  not  wear  them  out.  The 
destructions  of  nations  never  bury  them  in  the 
debris^  like  those  works  of  immortal  art  which  till 
lately  were  buried  under  the  soil  of  Rome.  The 
conflagration  of  all  libraries  could  not  burn  them 
out  of  the  world's  thought.  Arts  are  lost :  ideas, 
never.  So  long  as  one  man  lives  to  think  them, 
they  will  sway  the  civilization  of  the  future.  The 
look  of  things  sometimes  threatens  them.  The 
world  rolls  backward,  and  seems  about  to  crush 


242  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

out  its  Hstory.  But  occult  forces  hold  it  in  the 
grooves  of  progress. 

Furthermore,  these  creative  thoughts  are  from 
one  source,  and  ultimately  from  only  one.  In 
their  fullness,  and  in  forms  fitting  them  for  use 
in  practical  affairs,  they  all  spring  from  the  reli- 
gion of  Christ.  In  every  age,  those  truths  which 
have  moved  the  world,  and  have  made  the  world 
move  of  itself,  have  been  religious  truths,  or  truths 
born  of  religious  intuitions.  Every  thing  great 
springs  from  conscience.  All  our  civilization  is 
wrapped  up  in  the  Lord's  Prayer.  The  world 
never  gets  to  the  circumference  of  the  central 
lesson  of  a  Christian  nursery. 

It  was  quite  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  that, 
on  the  night  before  the  "  Emancipation  Act  "  went 
into  operation  in  the  West  Indies,  the  slaves  — 
chattels  to-day,  men  to-morrow — should  crowd 
their  churches  and  chapels  at  midnight,  to  greet 
the  first  hour  of  their  liberty  with  songs  of  praise 
and  prayer  to  the  Most  High.  Their  simple  faith 
taught  them  better  than  statesmen  knew,  from 
whence  their  redemption  came.  They  must  needs 
render  back  the  boon  to  Him  who  gave  it. 

Never  was  a  cannon  fired  for  liberty  which  had 
not  a  religious  thought  behind  it.  Never  was  a 
bill  of  human  rights  fought  for  with  success  which 
had  not  somewhere  for  its  preamble  a  bill  of  human 
duties.  The  word  "  ought "  is  the  supreme  word 
in  all  languages.  It  is  the  sovereign  of  all  ideas. 
Two  thousand  years  ago  Plato  discovered  that 
"  piety  is  necessary  to  knowledge." 


Does  the  World  Move?  243 

When  Clarkson  first  laid  before  William  Pitt 
the  argument  for  emancipation  in  the  West  Indies, 
he  says,  "  Many  sublime  thoughts  seemed  to  rush 
into  his  mind."  Sublime  thoughts  always  rush  into 
the  wake  of  one  great  moral  idea.  It  takes  but  a 
few  such  ideas  to  make  a  history  of  a  thousand 
years.  So  is  it  now.  These  principles  on  which 
the  noblest  modern  life  is  constructed  are  the 
direct  outgrowth  from  the  Christian  faith.  Under- 
neath them  are  the  Christian  doctrines  of  the  per- 
sonality and  the  fatherhood  of  God,  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  the  unity  and  brotherhood  of  the  race, 
a  universal  atonement,  and  the  freedom  of  the 
human  will.  Blot  out  these  doctrines  from  the 
religion  of  the  few,  to  whom  they  are  a  personal 
faith,  and  you  obliterate  in  the  end,  from  the  civ- 
ilization of  the  many,  the  great  creative  forces 
which  have  made  that  civilization  what  it  is. 
Then  chaos  comes  again. 

Yes :  the  world  does  move.  It  did  move  in  the 
ancient  ages.  It  is  moving  in  these  times  of  ours. 
Whatever  the  surface-currents  may  seem  to  indi- 
cate, the  lower  depths  of  modern  thought  are 
moving  Godward,  beyond  the  reach  of  counter- 
currents.  They  have  gained  a  momentum  into  the 
still  waters  of  faith  which  no  possible  re-actionary 
forces  can  counter-check. 

One  fact  out  of  a  score  like  it  gathers  into  itself 
a  volume  of  proofs  of  this.  Look  at  the  postal 
service  of  the  world.  Our  very  children  sjDort 
with  it,  and  their  fathers  use  it  with  little  or  no 


244  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

thought  of  what  it  means.  It  is  reported  that  the 
letters  dispatched  to  and  fro  through  the  post- 
offices  of  the  nations  during  the  year  1884  num- 
bered fifty-two  thousand  millions.  What  a  power 
of  mind  that  represents,  in  what  magnificent  move- 
ment !  What  had  the  Greek  civilization  to  com- 
pare with  it?  What  had  the  Roman?  Then, 
what  significance  it  carries !  It  means  intelligence ; 
it  means  mental  activity ;  it  means  alert  and  intri- 
cate thinking ;  it  means  faith ;  it  means  the  flowing 
of  all  the  great  ideas  which  the  past  has  generated 
into  the  world  of  the  future.  Dark  ages  can  never 
come  again. 


XIX. 

IS  THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING? 

RiCHAED  Baxter  was  a  lifelong  sufferer.  In- 
c arable  disease  ke]3t  him  for  years  at  death's  door. 
"  I  live  with  one  foot  in  the  grave,"  he  used  to  say. 
For  twenty  years  he  probably  did  not  know  the 
sensations  of  health.  The  jubilant  spring  of  life 
in  other  men  became  a  forgotten  joy  to  him.  As 
if  this  were  not  enough,  he  was  persecuted  for  his 
religion.  For  j)reaching  five  sermons  he  was  con- 
demned to  imprisonment  for  five  years.  Sermons 
were  costly  luxuries  in  those  days,  —  a  year  of  pris- 
on-life for  each  one  1  He  escaped  only  by  the  in- 
terposition of  his  physician,  who  swore  that  the 
execution  of  the  sentence  would  cost  him  his  life. 

Not  a  very  fascinating  life  this,  to  the  looker-on ! 
We  should  not  have  thought  him  querulous  against 
the  providence  of  God,  if  he  had  been  the  author 
of  an  essay  published  not  long  ago,  entitled,  "Is 
Life  Worth  Living?"  But  the  invalid  and  per- 
secuted preacher  published  no  such  thing  as  that. 
He  had  no  time  to  ask  or  answer  such  a  question. 
He  was  living,  and  he  made  the  best  of  it  by  liv- 
ing to  some  purpose.  He  published  a  hundred  and 
forty-five   distinct  works  in  the  intervals  of  his 

245 


246  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

pains.  He  was  one  of  the  busiest  of  men,  as, 
indeed.  Christian  invalids  have  commonly  been. 

Of  all  men  in  the  world,  he  was  the  one  who 
was  moved  to  write  "  The  Saint's  Rest."  And  so 
understandingly  did  he  write  of  it,  that  to  a  mil- 
lion of  readers  since  his  day,  it  has  seemed  as  if 
he  must  have  had  a  foretaste  of  the  heavenly 
blessedness  himself.  It  is  supposed  that  nearly  half 
a  million  of  copies  of  that  book  have  been  pub- 
lished, and  the  popular  verdict  upon  it  has  every- 
where been  the  same.  It  is  one  of  the  few  books 
so  profoundly  written  from  the  heart,  that  their 
insight  into  truth  borders  on  inspiration. 

Danto  wrote  of  purgatory  so  feelingly,  that 
people,  meeting  him  on  the  street,  used  to  say, 
"  There  goes  the  man  who  has  been  in  hell."  To 
Baxter's  million  readers,  it  has  seemed  that  he  must 
have  been  on  the  other  side  of  the  "great  gulf." 
Such  are  the  contrasts  and  contradictions  of  Chris- 
tian living.  Suffering  men  are  the  happiest  men. 
Women  on  beds  of  anguish  sing  most  honestly  our 
hymns  of  Christian  triumph.  Men  in  prisons  know 
most  of  Christian  liberty.  People  who  have  least 
of  this  world,  have  most  luminous  foresight  of 
heaven.  Sorrowful,  yet  always  rejoicing;  poor, 
yet  making  many  rich ;  having  nothing,  yet  pos- 
sessing all  things;  such  ideally  is  the  privilege  of 
holy  living. 

St.  Paul  appears  to  have  been  another  of  the 
great  Christian  contradictions.  As  one  reads  his 
autobiography,  it  does  seem  to  lend  reason  to  the 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       247 

conundrum,  "  Is  life  worth  living  ?  "  He  is  a  man 
of  bold  nerve  who  would  select  St.  Paul's  life  as 
a  model  of  his  own.  On  the  human  scale  of  meas- 
urement, the  apostle  can  not  be  pronounced  a  happy 
man.  He  was  not  hilarious  in  his  temperament. 
He  did  not  sing  many  comic  songs.  Men  who  do, 
can  not  make  much  of  him.  The  world  would 
not  call  his  life  a  lucky  one.  It  went  hard  with 
him  at  the  best.  What  a  history  of  ill-luck  he 
gives  us  !  Flogged  like  a  slave  in  the  market-place 
five  times,  and  three  times  in  court ;  shipwrecked 
three  times  j  pelted  with  stones  by  vagabonds  till 
he  was  left  for  dead ;  in  prisons  so  many  that  he 
does  not  count  them ;  hungry,  cold,  thirsty,  naked, 
robbed ;  hunted  by  murderers,  with  nothing  but  a 
wicker  basket  between  him  and  death ;  betrayed 
by  friends  whom  he  trusted  and  prayed  for ;  in  the 
city,  in  the  country,  in  the  wilderness,  on  the  sea, 
everywhere  in  the  wide  world,  beset  by  dangers ; 
always  guiltless,  yet  always  an  outlaw;  he  was 
saved  at  last  from  being  clothed  with  pitch,  and 
used  as  a  candle  to  light  the  streets  of  Eome,  by 
having  his  head  cut  off.  And  as  if  the  cruelty  of 
man  were  not  enough,  he  must  find  the  Devil  on 
his  track,  and  must  put  to  hazard  body  and  soul  in 
fight  with  invisible  foes,  more  ferocious  than  the 
beasts  of  Ephesus. 

No  :  this  ''  bald-pated  Galilean,"  as  Lucian  con- 
temptuously calls  him,  was  not  a  lucky  man.  I 
have  somewhere  read  of  a  man  who,  on  a  journey 
of  many  weeks,  encountered  a  continuous  succes- 


248  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

sion  of  accidents.  He  fell  through  broken  bridges, 
he  was  buried  under  a  wrecked  rail-car,  he  was 
caught  in  a  mountain  freshet,  highway  robbers 
assailed  him,  a  stray  pistol-shot  grazed  his  cheek, 
runaway  horses  threatened  his  life,  a  bolt  of  light- 
ning splintered  the  tree  under  which  he  sought 
shelter  in  a  shower.  At  last,  in  the  final  stage  of 
his  journey,  some  of  his  fellow-passengers,  on  hear- 
ing his  story,  declared  that  a  curse  was  on  him ;  a 
malign  fate  was  after  him ;  he  would  surely  die  of 
it ;  and  they  hurried  out  of  the  car  where  they  had 
found  him.  They  would  not  risk  their  lives  in 
company  with  a  man  whom  a  legion  of  fiends  pur- 
sued so  malignantly.  So,  judging  in  the  world's 
way,  we  should  say  of  this  old  Jew  of  Tarsus,  that 
"  the  stars  in  their  courses  fought  against "  him. 
He  was  born  to  misfortune ;  and  wise  men,  who 
valued  their  lives,  would  fight  shy  of  him. 

Yet,  of  all  men  in  the  world,  this  man  is  the  one 
to  say,  "I  will  glory  in  my  infirmities."  This 
hunted  and  outlawed  "  babbler,"  as  the  wise  men 
of  Athens  called  him,  is  the  man  to  tell  us  what  a 
blessed  thing  life  is,  how  grandly  worth  living, 
what  a  good  fight  it  is,  full  of  what  magnificent 
chances,  what  a  precious  thing  suffering  is,  and 
what  an  imperial  coronation  glorifies  it  at  the  end. 
This  is  the  man  who  goes  to  his  grave  exultingly, 
and  celebrates  a  victory  over  death  !  Can  we  not 
hear  his  ringing  voice,  as  he  flings  the  gantlet  to 
the  great  enemy,  —  O  Death,  where  is  thy  sting  ? 
O  Grave,  where  is  thy  victory?     He  really  seems 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       249 

to  have  been  one  of  the  happiest  of  men,  yet  one 
of  the  most  illustrious  of  sufferers.  Where  in  all 
history  shall  we  find  his  peer,  —  his  peer  in  sorrow, 
his  peer  in  joy  ? 

What  is  the  secret  of  it  all  ?  Christian  history 
is  full  of  such  contradictions.  Unwritten  biog- 
raphy abounds  with  them.  Men  and  women  are 
now  living  such  lives  in  secret.  The  world  does 
not  know  them,  and  never  will  while  time  lasts. 
But  they  are  a  great  multitude,  whom  no  man  can 
number.  Not  that  there  are  many  Baxters,  nor 
do  St.  Pauls  come  in  crowds.  But  there  is  an 
innumerable  host  of  plain  men  and  women,  and 
children  even,  whose  lives  do  approximate  and 
honestly  claim  rank  with  illustrious  saints.  Mar- 
tyrs, as  a  class,  have  been  the  most  cheerful  of 
men.  This  is  the  Christian  theory  of  living, — 
that  such  life  is  a  victory,  not  a  conflict  only,  and 
least  of  all  is  it  a  losing  fight.  The  "  Saint's  Rest " 
begins  here.  Baxter  told  in  plain  words  what  he 
knew.  Conquest  of  death,  and  triumph  over  the 
grave,  are  initiated  here  in  ten  thousand  Christian 
homes.  The  psalm  of  life,  as  it  is  sung  at  count- 
less firesides,  is  a  jubilant  one.  On  beds  of  pain, 
the  songs  of  Zion  are  most  exultant. 

This  is  the  Christian  ideal  of  life.  But  what  is 
the  secret  of  it  ?  Can  a  man  enjoy  pain  ?  Does 
God  expect  us  to  be  happy  on  a  rack  ?  Are  thumb- 
screws and  Scotch  "  boots  "  playthings  ?  Is  cruci- 
fixion a  comedy  ?  An  old  legend  tells  of  a  species 
of  animals  which  live   in   fire.     They   dance   on 


250  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

burning  coals.  They  gambol  in  a  furnace  at  white- 
heat.  Are  men  and  women  made  of  stuff  so  sym- 
pathetic with  fire  ?  We,  who  are  not  Baxters  and 
St.  Pauls,  but  only  men  of  common  sort,  want  a 
solution  of  the  mystery.  Some  men  are  weary  — 
very  weary — of  life,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing  to 
them,  they  think  they  are  ;  and  they  need  the  solu- 
tion desperately.  In  the  watches  of  the  night  they 
cry  out,  "  Oh  that  I  had  the  wings  of  a  dove ! " 

But  disconsolate  views  of  life  are  not  the  prod- 
uct of  healthy  Christian  living.  The  protest  which 
some  assert  against  their  own  creation  without 
their  own  consent  is  profane.  No  wise  man  will 
foster  such  moods  in  himself.  They  are  a  mental 
weakness  and  a  moral  wrong.  The  Bible  is  a 
manly  book.  It  cherishes  an  athletic  piety.  When 
the  angel  directed  Lot's  flight  from  Sodom,  he  did 
his  best  to  persuade  the  old  man  to  seek  refuge  on 
the  mountain-top.  Only  by  concession  to  age  and 
fright  was  he  permitted  to  rest  in  the  lowlands. 
This  is  emblematic  of  that  type  of  religion  which 
the  Bible  fosters.  It  enjoins  the  difQcult  duty, 
encourages  the  arduous  achievement,  exhorts  to 
the  aspiring  aim,  inspires  the  buoyant  hope,  makes 
men  stout  in  crises.  It  puts  into  a  man's  religion 
the  old  feudal  element  of  chivalry.  On  the  same 
principle,  it  withholds  sympathy  from  cowardly 
views  of  life  and  the  chronic  desire  for  death.  It 
was  Christianity  which  first  made  suicide  infamous. 

The  Scriptures  do  not  encourage,  even  an  habit- 
ual meditation  on  death.     They  lend  no  sanction 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       251 

to  that  monastic  life  in  which  men  kept  a  human 
skull  always  in  sight.  Christianity  never  built 
the  "  Church  of  St.  Ursula  and  the  Eleven  Thou- 
sand Virgins  "  at  Cologne,  in  which  the  walls  are 
made  of  the  virgins'  skulls,  and  glass  cases  are 
filled  with  them  in  ghastly  rows  around  the  choir. 
They  have  no  word  of  sympathy  for  men  who 
build  their  coffins  before  the  time,  and  store  them 
in  their  chambers.  Emerson  tells  of  a  woman 
who  for  years  made  up  her  bed  every  morning  in 
the  shape  of  a  coffin,  and  regaled  her  fancy  with 
the  discovery  that  the  tower  of  a  church  near  by 
threw  its  shadow  in  the  figure  of  a  coffin  on  the 
sidewalk  every  evening.  God  would  have  no  such 
beggarly  piety  as  this  among  men  and  women  of 
His  creating.  In  such  a  world  as  this,  we  should 
be  too  busy  to  make  a  hobby  of  dying.  We  should 
think  of  it,  only  enough  to  be  prepared  to  meet 
it  calmly  when  it  comes,  and  to  look  at  the  life 
beyond  as  a  progress.  The  majority  of  thought- 
ful men  think  too  much  about  it. 

The  desire  for  death  is  commonly  a  counterfeit. 
Men  do  not  know  their  own  minds  when  they 
think  death  would  be  welcome,  and  is  long  in 
coming.  Men  who  talk  in  that  strain  are  not  con- 
scious hypocrites  ;  but  they  fight  for  dear  life  when 
the  need  comes,  like  the  rest  of  us.  One  such 
man,  at  the  age  of  ninety,  said  that  he  should  be 
glad  to  die ;  but  he  wanted  to  live  till  he  was  an 
old  man.  Men  who  ask  with  a  sneer  whether  life 
is  worth  living,  if  wrecked  at  sea,  swim  if  they 


252  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

can.  If  attacked  by  Asiatic  cholera,  tliey  send 
for  a  physician,  choose  the  best  expert,  and  send  a 
fleet  horse  for  him.  If  threatened  with  consump- 
tion, they  cross  the  sea  in  search  of  more  salubrious 
climes.  I  have  observed,  too,  that  men  who  fling 
insult  at  their  Creator  for  giving  them  an  exist- 
ence they  never  asked  for,  do  not  take  kindly  to 
annihilation. 

Even  the  mental  habits  of  good  men  sometimes 
need  a  correction  of  perspective  in  their  ideas.  I 
once  knew  a  clergyman  whose  mind  was  inordi- 
nately intent  on  heaven.  It  was  the  favorite  theme 
of  his  sermons.  His  prayers  often  seemed  to  be 
an  inspiration  from  thence.  His  favorite  hymns 
were  descriptive  of  the  better  world.  In  conver- 
sation, he  dwelt  much  upon  its  employments  and 
discoveries.  He  used  to  imagine  his  interviews 
with  prophets  and  apostles.  He  made  up  his  mind 
w^ho  should  be  the  first  object  of  his  search  among 
them.  He  lived  at  the  gates  of  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem, and  they  appeared  to  be  ajar  to  his  ^dsion.  I 
thought  to  myself,  that  it  Avould  be  an  easy  tiring 
for  him  to  die.  He  gave  a  beautiful  example,  as 
many  thought,  of  what  the  Scriptures  mean  when 
they  say,  "  Let  your  conversation  be  in  heaven  !  " 
I  anticipated,  that,  in  his  last  hours,  he  would  have 
visions  of  the  place,  and  hear  music  in  the  air,  as 
some  dying  saints  do. 

When  the  time  came,  however,  he  had  no  visions, 
he  heard  no  songs  of  angelic  rapture.  He  died  of 
a  painful,  lingering  disease,  but,  through  it  all, 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       253 

never  expressed  a  desire  to  go.  On  the  contrary, 
he  was  one  of  the  most  resolute  invalids  I  ever 
knew,  in  his  determination  to  live.  He  lived  for 
years  on  his  will-power.  He  sought  health,  as 
other  men  do,  at  every  cost.  If  Heaven  then 
seemed  to  him  the  more  attractive  world,  he  never 
said  it  to  his  friends.  His  favorite  Scriptures  then 
were  not  those  descriptive  of  heaven,  nor  were  his 
favorite  hymns  such.  And  at  last  he  died,  one  of 
the  silent  saints. 

No  man  knows,  or  ought  to  judge,  the  inner  life 
of  another.  There  was  much  that  was  beautiful 
and  inspiring  in  the  life  of  that  man  in  his  days 
of  health.  Yet  I  suspect  that  his  closing  years 
were,  as  a  whole,  more  natural  and  truthful. 
There  was  less  glamour  about  them.  Probably  he 
was  a  better  man  in  his  desire  to  live,  than  in  his 
old  dreams  of  hastening  to  see  the  prophets  and 
apostles.  He  ought  to  have  desired  to  live,  and 
to  have  done  his  best  to  prolong  life.  The  real 
man,  the  inner  core  of  character,  probably  came 
to  light  in  his  faithful  performance  of  that  duty. 
If  he  could  meet  the  end  trustfully,  as  he  did,  it 
was  not  his  business  to  hasten  it  by  so  much  as  a 
wish.  While  he  lived,  it  was  his  duty  to  live. 
One  of  the  most  godly  things  he  ever  did,  to  the 
admiration  of  ministering  angels,  may  have  been 
the  exercise  of  that  splendid  will-power  in  the 
struggle  for  life,  which  he  would  not  relax  one  jot. 

The  Christian  ideal  of  life  is  health,  not  disease. 
The  beauty  of  holiness  is  never  hectic.     Healthy 


254  My  Study:  and  Oilier  Essays. 

hopes,  healthy  desires,  healthy  aims,  healthy  pray- 
ers, healthy  work,  healthy  retrospects,  —  these  are 
Christian  living.  The  Christ-like  ideal  consists 
rather  in  the  will-power  than  in  moods  of  feeling. 
The  concentration  of  the  strength  of  a  man  upon 
the  opportunities  and  resources  which  this  world 
gives  for  use  in  great  endeavor,  is  more  Scrij^tural 
and  more  natural  than  going  into  hiding  in  the 
chambers  of  an  invalid  piety,  and  there  waiting 
for  death.  In  such  a  life,  we  are  nearer  to  the  life 
of  God.  We  find  no  time  to  ask.  Is  life  worth 
living  ?  and  we  have  as  little  disposition  as  time. 

Let  us  not  overlook  here  the  fact  that  God  does 
not  sit  aloft  in  remote  and  inaccessible  seclusion 
from  our  human  woes.  They  are  more  real  to  God 
than  they  are  to  us.  No  being  in  the  universe  feels 
the  pains  of  human  life  so  deeply  as  He  feels  them. 
Not  one  pang  of  suffering  rasps  any  human  nerve, 
which  God  does  not  appropriate  as  if  it  were  His 
own.  This  is  the  working  of  infinite  sympathies 
in  the  heart  of  a  loving  Creator.  "In  all  their 
affliction.  He  was  afflicted."  Yet  over  and  above 
the  billows  of  human  sorrow,  the  blessedness  of 
God  remains  intact.  In  those  very  sorrows,  He 
finds  cause  of  joy,  because  they  are  the  instru- 
ments of  His  own  benevolence.  They  have  never 
taken  Him  by  surprise.  He  has  made  no  mistakes 
in  them ;  nor  has  He  ever  permitted  one  of  them 
which  He  could  not  use,  to  more  loving  purpose 
than  He  could  use  ease  and  comfort  and  indulgence 
in  its  place.     He  is  blessed,  therefore,  not  only  in 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       255 

spite  of  them,  but  in  them.  And  the  principle  of 
Christian  living  is,  that  what  God  enjoys  we  can 
enjoy. 

For  example,  the  works  of  God,  the  Word  of 
God,  the  plans  of  God  in  redemption,  His  pur- 
poses in  the  development  of  a  Christian  civiliza- 
tion. His  joy  in  Christ,  His  delight  in  His  own 
perfections.  His  outflow  of  benevolence  to  the 
holy  universe.  His  complacency  in  the  reciprocated 
love  of  angels  and  men,  and  whatever  other  orders 
of  being  may  people  space.  His  beneficent  vigi- 
lance over  human  sorrows.  His  foresight  and 
decree  of  their  fruits  in  building  character,  —  all 
these  objective  tributaries  to  the  great  ocean  of 
felicity  which  fills  the  heart  of  God  are  equally 
fitted  to  be  tributary  to  ours.  Why  not  ?  Are  we 
not  made  in  God's  image  ?  Are  we  not  like  Him 
in  our  better  nature  ?  Why  not  like  Him,  then,  in 
our  resources  which  make  life  worth  living  ? 

True,  all  this  implies  that  we  are  something 
more  than  creatures  of  sense.  We  belong  to 
another  genus  than  that  of  mammalia.  We  have 
other  faculties  than  the  five  which  physiologists 
count.  We  are  beings  of  thought,  of  faith,  of 
illimitable  desires,  of  aspirations  which  penetrate 
eternity.  It  implies  that  we  ought  not  to  be, 
and  can  not  be,  satisfied  with  pleasures  of  sense. 
Satiated  we  may  be,  but  not  satisfied.  There  is 
an  antipodal  difference  between  the  two.  A  man 
whose  supreme  enjoyments  are  in  fine  houses  and 
costly  furnishings,  and  tasteful  grounds,  and  rich 


256  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

conservatories,  and  fleet  horses,  and  the  master- 
pieces of  fine  art,  and  the  thousand  and  one  things 
which  make  up  the  possibly  innocent  pleasures  of 
a  sensuous  millionaire,  is  sure  to  weary  of  it  all  in 
the  end.  Such  men  often  desire,  or  think  they 
desire,  to  die.  They  are  the  men  who  talk  most 
glibly  of  "the  great  PerhajDS."  Suicides  are  not 
found  mainly,  or  chiefly,  among  the  miserably 
poor. 

Sensuous  men  have  a  revolution  to  undergo 
before  they  can  understand  what  a  grand  thing 
life  is  as  a  life  of  godlike  opportunity.  New  tastes 
must  come  uppermost  in  their  nature.  They  are 
living  on  .the  under  side  of  the  universe.  Occult 
realities  must  be  revealed  to  them.  They  must 
come  up  into  the  life  of  Christ.  Wings  must 
grow. 

Even  a  life  which,  though  preponderantly  right, 
lacks  fullness  and  intensity  in  its  sympathy  with 
the  life  of  God,  as  the  lives  of  most  men  do,  will 
declare  the  ascendency  of  discomfort  in  the  ret- 
rospect at  the  end.  The  testimony  of  the  ages 
to  such  an  imperfect  life  is  given  in  the  words  of 
the  patriarch,  "  Few  and  evil  have  been  the  days." 

The  elder  President  Adams  in  his  ninetieth  year 
said,  "  I  have  lived  a  long,  harassed,  and  distracted 
life."  When  a  friend  suggested,  "The  world 
thinks  a  good  deal  of  joy  has  been  mixed  with  it," 
he  responded,  "  The  world  does  not  know  how 
much  toil,  anxiety,  and  sorrow  I  have  suffered." 
Is  there  no  remedy  for  this  never-ending  contra- 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Livi^igf       257 

diction  between  the  memory  of  a  prosperous  life 
and  its  seeming  to  observers?  Does  it  exist  in 
any  other  world  than  this  ?  Carlyle  expressed  it 
in  his  savage  way,  "  The  ground  of  my  existence 
is  as  black  as  death."  John  Foster  says  of  him- 
self, "  Something  seems  to  say  to  me,  '  Come  away ! 
Come  away ! '  I  am  but  a  gloomy  ghost  among 
the  living  and  the  happy."  And  his  father  used 
for  twenty  years  before  his  death  to  pray  on  every 
New- Year's  Day,  that  the  coming  year  might  be  his 
last.  What  is  it  that  such  men  need?  Something 
surely  is  awry  with  them.  God  never  meant  that 
men  should  live  "gloomy  ghosts"  on  "ground  as 
black  as  death."  Who  can  disclose  to  us  the  great 
secret? 

Physicians  have  a  short  way  of  settling  the 
matter.  They  tell  us  to  get  rid  of  dysj)epsia. 
"  Obey  nature's  laws,  and  get  health,  and  things 
will  right  themselves  !  "  As  if  a  rtian  were  noth- 
ing but  stomach  and  spleen,  such  as  they  preserve 
in  alcohol !  But  suppose  we  can  not  be  rid  of 
dyspepsia.  What  then?  Must  every  diseased 
man  be  miserable?  Must  the  decline  of  life  be 
the  decline  of  every  thing  that  makes  one  desire 
life  ?  A  genuine  soul,  possessed  of  a  genuine  sym- 
pathy with  the  life  of  God,  need  never  see  the 
hour  when  death  shall  be  desirable.  The  apostolic 
idea  means  just  what  it  says,  "  Rejoice  in  the  Lord 
always  !  "  It  is  a  practicable  idea  to  any  man  who 
will  give  Christianity  a  chance  to  do  what  it  can 
for  him. 


258  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

Carlyle  would  have  been  a  happier  man  if  his 
manhood  had  realized  to  him  more  profoundly  the 
faith  of  his  childhood  as  his  mother  taught  it  to 
him.  He  would  have  made  his  home  more  serene 
to  his  disconsolate  wife.  The  mother  in  her  nurs- 
ery was  wiser  than  the  wise  man  of  whom  the 
world  stood  in  awe.  Let  God  be  as  real  to  a  man 
as  an  excruciated  eyeball,  and  the  excruciated  eye- 
ball will  become  a  myth.  Many  times  Christian 
martyrdom  has  proved  this. 

I  know  there  seems  to  be  an  exasperating  un- 
reality in  such  a  notion  of  life  as  this.  We  are  not 
mart}T:s.  We  have  not  the  faith  of  martyrs.  So 
we  put  it  to  ourselves  in  honest  thought,  and  we 
wish  preachers  would  talk  like  men  of  the  world. 
This  "  life  of  God  "  is  very  high  up,  and  very  far 
away.  We  look  up  to  find  it,  and  we  see  nothing 
but  mocking  stars.  Scientists  tell  us  that  we 
should  freeze  to  death  before  we  could  reach  the 
nearest  of  them.  That  seems  to  us  an  emblem  of 
our  vain  attempts  to  realize  this  hidden  life. 

Yet  this  Christian  ideal  contains  nothing  im- 
practicable to  common  men  in  common  life.  If 
we  have  not  the  faith  of  martyrs,  neither  are  we 
called  to  the  life  of  martyrs.  The  faith  practicable 
to  us  is  adequate  to  the  life  we  are  appointed  to 
live.     The  grace  and  calling  balance  each  other. 

The  Rev.  William  Jay  of  Bath,  England,  has 
left  on  record  one  of  the  most  healthful  reminis- 
cent views  of  life  which  it  has  been  my  privilege 
to  meet  with.     It  is  so  apt  an  answer  to  the  ques- 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       259 

tion,  "  Is  life  worth  living  ?  "  and  so  pertinent  an 
offset  to  the  desire  for  death  which  some  good  men 
feel,  that  it  is  worth  transcribing.  After  a  labori- 
ous pastorate  of  fifty  years,  he  writes,  "I  have 
heard  many  express  the  sentiment  of  Cowper, — 

"  <  Worlds  would  not  bribe  me  back  to  tread 
Again  life's  dreary  waste, 
To  see  the  future  overspread 
With  all  the  dreary  past.' 

Such  language  is  not  for  me.  I  should  not  shrink 
from  the  prospect  of  repetition.  My  duties  have 
not  been  irksome.  My  trials  have  been  few  com- 
pared with  my  comforts.  My  condition  has  been 
the  happy  medium  between  poverty  and  riches. 
I  do  not  believe  that  in  this  earth  misery  prepon- 
derates over  good.  I  have  a  better  opinion  of 
mankind  than  when  I  began  public  life :  I  can  not 
ask  what  is  the  cause  that  the  former  days  were 
better  than  these.  I  do  not  believe  the  fact  itself. 
God  has  not  been  throwing  away  duration  on  the 
human  race.  The  state  of  the  world  has  been 
improving,  is  improving.  Blessed  are  our  eyes  for 
what  they  see,  and  our  ears  for  what  they  hear." 

This  is  Christian  health  in  an  old  man's  ret- 
rospect of  life.  It  illustrates  what  Christianity 
can  do  for  a  man  in  forming  his  judgments  of  men, 
and  bringing  him  en  rajppoi^t  with  the  providence 
of  God.  Such  a  man  can  never  bury  himself  in 
monastic  meditation  upon  another  man's  skull,  or 
a  morbid  longing  to  get  rid  of  his  own.     Such  a 


260  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

man  will  never  ask  the  question,  "  Is  life  worth, 
living  ? "  It  is  for  such  men  as  Voltaire  and 
Thomas  Paine  to  cry  as  they  did,  "  Oh  that  I  had 
never  been  born ! "  For  Christian  believers  re- 
mains the  Pauline  vision  which  discloses  in  both 
worlds  such  magnificent  opportunity  to  be  and  to 
do,  that  we  can  not  make  choice  between  them. 

Say  what  men  may  of  it,  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  living  in  sympathy  with  God.  There  are  men 
who  k7iow  it.  It  is  the  most  real  thing  that  is, 
in  any  man's  life.  It  is  the  province  of  Chris- 
tianity to  make  it  a  common  reality  to  common 
men.  The  fruit  of  it  is  to  make  men  participants 
of  the  life  that  God  lives.  His  will  becomes  ours, 
His  plans  ours.  His  look  into  the  future  ours.  His 
joys  Qurs.  Our  whole  being  is  held  in  trust  by 
His  eternal  choice.  The  most  ignorant  and  sen- 
suous of  us,  those  of  most  wooden  indurated 
natures,  are  called  of  God  to  this  lofty  and  pure 
alliance.  We  may  become  one  with  Him,  as 
Christ  was  and  is.  Is  not  such  a  life  worth 
living  ? 

Jeremy  Taylor,  the  illustrious  preacher  at  Golden 
Grove,  himself  a  suffering,  and  sometimes  perse- 
cuted, believer,  in  a  sermon  on  a  theme  kindred  to 
the  one  before  us,  after  enumerating  vividly  life's 
trials,  says,  "  They  have  taken  all  from  me.  What 
now  ?  Let  me  look  about  me.  Unless  I  list,  they 
have  not  taken  away  my  merry  countenance,  and 
my  cheerful  spirit,  and  my  good  conscience.  They 
still  have  left  me  God's  providence,  and  Christ's 


Is  the  Christian  Life  Worth  Living?       261 

promises,  and  my  religion,  and  my  hopes  of  Heaven. 
I  can  delight  in  all  that  in  which  God  delights, 
and  in  God  Himself.  He  that  hath  so  many  causes 
of  joy,  and  so  great,  must  be  very  much  in  love 
with  sorrow,  who  loses  all  these  treasures,  and 
chooses  to  sit  down  on  his  little  handful  of 
thorns." 


XX. 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH. 

PAET   I. 

It  has  been  wisely  said,  that  no  belief  conscien- 
tiously held  by  large  bodies  of  men,  and  wrought 
into  institutions  which  have  a  history,  can  be 
utterly  false.  Such  is  the  make  of  mind  as  related 
to  truth,  and  of  truth  as  related  to  mind,  that,  on 
the  large  scale,  they  must  discover  each  other. 

This  principle  underlies  the  divisions  of  the 
Church  into  denominational  sections.  Every  de- 
nomination is  what  it  is  through  certain  inborn 
affinities,  in  which  it  differs  from  the  rest.  It  rep- 
resents some  truth,  or  phase  of  truth,  or  propor- 
tions, shadings,  combinations  of  truth,  which  other 
denominations  do  not  represent  with  equal  author- 
ity. Every  denomination  lives,  therefore,  because 
it  must  live.  In  the  divine  order  of  things,  it  has 
a  call  to  live.  It  is  a  spoke  in  the  wheel  which  is 
needful  to  the  completeness  of  the  circle  and  the 
safety  of  its  revolutions.  Every  denomination, 
therefore,  has  its  mission.  In  some  things,  it  is 
wiser  than  its  peers.  We  lose  one  of  the  divinely 
ordained  means  of  Christian  culture  if  we  are  too 
lofty  to  learn  of  each  other. 

262 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.        263 

The  rise  of  the  great  Christian  sects  marks 
epochs  in  Protestant  history.  They  were  the  prod- 
ucts of  great  agitations.  Sometimes  they  were 
signs  of  great  discoveries,  for  which  the  world 
was  waiting.  Again,  they  indicated  great  revivals 
of  an  expiring  faith.  What  would  the  English- 
speaking  churches  of  to-day  have  been  but  for  the 
rise  of  Methodism?  Even  the  secular  history  of 
England  was  revolutionized  to  an  extent  which 
has  molded  the  destiny  of  the  empire,  by  the 
rise  of  the  Independents  in  the  Church. 

A  friendly  study  of  the  Episcopal  Church  dis- 
closes certain  dominant  ideas^  which  we  who  cher- 
ish Puritan  traditions  may  with  profit  add  to  our 
stock  of  wisdom.  One  of  those  ideas  is  that  of 
the  dignity  of  worship.  Other  denominations  are 
its  superiors  in  appreciating  the  dignity  of  the 
pulpit.  But  of  Christian  worship,  no  other  branch 
of  the  Church  universal  has  so  lofty  an  ideal  as 
the  Church  of  England  and  its  offshoot  in  this 
country.  In  all  the  liturgic  literature  of  our  lan- 
guage, nothing  equals  the  Anglican  Litany.  Its 
variety  of  thought,  its  spiritual  pathos,  its  choice 
selection  of  the  most  vital  themes  of  prayer,  its 
reverent  importunity,  its  theological  ortliodoxy, 
and  its  exquisite  propriety  of  style,  will  commend 
it  to  the  hearts  of  devout  worshipers  of  many  gen- 
erations to  come,  as  they  have  done  to  generations 
past.  For  an  equipoise  of  balanced  virtues,  it  is 
unrivaled.  Its  union  of  intensity  with  simplicity 
will   go   far  to    protect   its  use  from  the  danger 


264  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

of  formalism,  to  which  all  fixed  liturgies  are 
exposed. 

The  liturgic  forms  of  other  denominations  would 
be  saved  from  some  excrescences  and  inanities  if 
the  venerable  Book  of  Common  Prayer  were  more 
generally  revered  as  a  model.  In  the  stock  of 
clerical  anecdote,  which  contributes  so  largely  to 
the  comicalities  of  the  newspapers,  the  infirmities 
of  extemporaneous  prayer  hold  an  unfortunate  pre- 
eminence. Their  repellent  influence  on  cultured 
minds  is  mournful.  The  growing  taste  among  us 
for  responsive  worship,  and  for  the  alternation  of 
prescribed  with  extemporaneous  forms  of  devotion, 
is  a  healthful  one.  With  the  increase  of  culture, 
in  large  communities  especially,  the  demand  must 
grow  for  such  improvements  upon  our  ancient 
ways.  A  valuable  portion  of  the  constituency 
most  germane  to  our  Puritan  churches  will  seek 
them  elsewhere  if  we  do  not  provide  them  our- 
selves. 

Nearly  allied  with  an  appreciation  of  the  dignity 
of  worship,  is  another  idea,  in  honor  of  which  the 
Church  of  England  sets  a  commendable  example. 
It  is  that  of  the  sacredness  of  the  House  of  God. 

Democracy  is  not  friendly  to  reverence  for  places. 
Many  of  our  churches  are,  in  this  respect,  more 
democratic  than  religious.  Our  revolt  from  pil- 
grimages and  shrines  and  sacred  relics  has  swung 
us  over  to  the  antipodes,  in  which  we  scarcely 
recognize  any  thing  material  as  more  venerable 
than  another  thing.     Science  settles  the  question. 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Ohurch.         265 

Are  they  not  all  resolvable  into  imponderable 
gases  ?  We  are  but  just  beginning  to  know  what 
church  architecture  is.  In  one  thing,  we  have 
not  outlived  the  barbarian  age.  Some  among  us 
still  prefer  to  see,  surmounting  our  church-spires, 
a  horrible  satire  on  our  faith,  in  the  form  of  a 
weather-vane  or  a  cockerel,  rather  than  the  golden 
cross,  its  only  proper  symbol,  if  we  have  any. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  uses  to  which  we  often 
put  our  places  of  worship?  In  rural  parishes, 
their  doors  are  often  open  to  town-meetings  and 
strolling  lecturers.  In  the  vestibule  of  one  church 
was  once  posted  a  notice,  humbly  requesting  that 
shells  of  peanuts  and  expectorations  of  tobacco 
should  not  be  left  upon  the  carpeted  floor.  Not 
long  ago  a  raffle  for  a  sewing-machine  was  held 
in  the  auditorium,  and  the  conditions  were  an- 
nounced glibly  from  the  pulpit.  Church-fairs 
around  and  on  the  sacramental  table  are  too  old 
a  story  to  bear  recital.  It  is  a  grief  to  reverent 
taste,  that  the  basements  of  our  sacred  edifices 
should  be  devoted  to  commercial  uses.  One  in- 
stance I  have  known,  in  which  worshipers  assem- 
bled on  the  Lord's  Day  through  a  darkened  passage, 
flanked  on  either  side  by  a  grocery  and  a  provision 
store.  The  atmosphere  they  breathed  on  a  Sunday 
morning  was  redolent  with  cheese  and  raw  beef. 

The  climax  of  this  semi-barbarism  was  reached 
in  a  church  in  the  city  of  Boston.  It  could  not 
be  excused  on  the  score  of  the  simplicity  of  rural 
taste.     The  pastor  and  some  of  his  congregation 


266  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

were  models  of  refinement  and  Christian  reverence. 
On  a  sabbath  morning  in  midsummer,  the  audience 
were  mysteriously  seized,  in  the  midst  of  the  ser- 
vice of  song,  with  a  paroxysm  of  uncontrollable 
sneezing.  First  the  children,  then  the  choir,  and 
at  length  nearly  the  whole  assembly,  the  preacher 
included,  broke  out  into  that  involuntary  convul- 
sion which  a  former  president  of  Harvard  College 
once  protested  that  he  had  not  perpetrated  in  the 
presence  of  another  for  seventeen  years.  It  was 
as  if  they  had  regaled  themselves  with  the  hele- 
nium  autumnale^  popularly  known  as  "  sneeze-weed." 
Did  ever  American  savage  or  African  Hottentot 
bring  such  an  offering  to  his  gods  ?  When  the 
premises  were  searched  by  the  astounded  sexton 
amidst  the  cachinnations  of  the  boys,  the  cause  of 
the  ridiculous  catastrophe  w^as  found  to  be  a  cargo 
of  pepper^  which,  during  the  previous  week,  had 
been  stored  in  the  cellar.  The  enterprising  trus- 
tees had  rented  the  place  to  a  wholesale  grocer. 
They  thus  eked  out  the  salary  of  the  pastor  and 
the  wages  of  the  sexton. 

Since  the  foregoing  paragraph  was  written,  I 
have  been  informed  of  an  incident  which  indicates 
that  there  is  a  climax  above  the  "  climax."  It 
appears  that  a  church  in  Philadelpliia  was  for  sev- 
eral years  burdened  with  current  expenses  beyond 
receipts  ;  and,  to  supply  the  deficit,  the  trustees 
leased  the  basement  to  a  wholesale  brewery  for  the 
storage  of  beer.  A  preacher  who  once  occupied 
the  pulpit,  testifies  that  the  fumes  from  the  beer- 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church,         267 

barrels  were  very  perceptible  to  the  congregation 
on  the  Lord's  Day. 

There  is  a  certain  old  Book  in  which  it  is 
written,  "Incense  is  an  abomination  unto  Me." 
Was  not  that  prophetic,  since  prophecy  often  has 
a  double  sense,  of  those  Philadelphia  beer-barrels? 
One  hardly  knows  whether  to  condole  with,  or  to 
congratulate,  that  church,  that  their  economical 
thrift  did  not  save  them  from  bankruptcy.  The 
sooner  the  auctioneer's  hammer  falls  on  such  an 
edifice,  the  better.  The  Lord  never  owned  it :  the 
brewer  had  the  better  claim. 

Illustrations  of  this  evil  multiply  ad  nauseam. 
In  a  thriving  city  of  Connecticut,  then  one  of  the 
dual  capitals  of  the  State,  a  benevolent  tailor  —  I 
think  he  was  —  was  once  applied  to  for  a  subscrip- 
tion to  the  building  of  a  church.  He  responded 
with  great  alacrity.  He  said  that  he  would  give 
the  building-lot  himself.  The  countenances  of  the 
committee  brightened.  He  went  on  to  explain, 
saying  that  he  was  about  to  build  a  new  store  for 
his  increasing  business,  and  that  he  would  build 
one  story,  and  the  church  was  "welcome  to  all 
above  that,  upward  to  Heaven."  The  usage  of  the 
churches  he  was  familiar  with  had  not  suggested 
to  him  a  doubt  that  his  benevolent  offer  would  be 
gratefully  accepted. 

Are  such  uncivilized  associations  ever  found 
connected  with  an  Episcopal  Church?  If  so,  it 
has  not  been  my  misfortune  to  meet  them  there. 
If,  on  entering  a  New-England  village,  your  eye 


268  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

falls  on  a  place  of  worship  more  comely  than  the 
rest  in  architecture,  and  free  from  nnchurchly 
accompaniments,  do  you  not  know,  without  asking, 
to  what  denomination  of  worshipers  it  belongs? 
Grant  that  Episcopal  usage  sometimes  crowds  its 
churchly  reverence  to  an  extreme  ;  but  is  not  that 
a  safer  extreme  than  ours  ?  We  would  not  imitate 
the  scruple  of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  lifted  his  hat 
when  he  passed  a  church  in  the  street ;  but  we 
would  rather  do  it  than  to  wear  the  hat  from  the 
pew  to  the  vestibule.  The  educating  influence  of 
this  sentiment  on  children  of  the  Church  is  of  un- 
told value.  One  of  the  most  difficult  of  the  Chris- 
tian virtues  to  instill  into  youthful  character  is 
that  of  reverence.  The  place  where  God  dwells 
is  its  natural  auxiliary. 

The  value  of  the  House  of  the  Lord  for  this 
purpose  must  increase  as  our  country  grows  old, 
and  its  temples  of  worship  become  venerable  with 
hundreds  of  years.  They  should  be  built,  if  pos- 
sible, with  stone,  that  they  may  defy  the  ravages 
of  fire  and  of  time.  The  recollections  of  the  expe- 
riences of  childhood  in  the  House  of  God  may 
then  be  among  the  most  precious  treasures  of 
Christian  culture.  They  may  come  back  in  after- 
years,  "  trailing  clouds  of  glory."  They  make  the 
very  walls  eloquent  above  all  human  speech.  The 
stone  cries  out  of  the  wall,  and  the  beam  out  of 
the  timber  answers  it.  That  instinct  of  our  na- 
ture which  reveres  the  place  where  God's  honor 
dwells,  is  no  fiction.     God  has  not  wrought  a  false- 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         269 

hood  or  a  frivolity  into  the  very  make  of  the  human 
mind  in  creating  it.  The  intuitions  of  the  race 
have  expressed  it  through  all  history. 

This  reverence  for  the  place  where  the  distance 
seems  to  be  lessened  between  man  and  God  is 
surely  scriptural.  Remember  Jacob's  dream  of 
converse  with  angels,  "  How  dreadful  is  this  place ! 
The  Lord  is  here,  and  I  knew  it  not !  "  Recall  the 
night  which  he  spent  under  the  open  sky,  when  in 
his  troubled  sleep  he  seemed  to  wrestle  with  a 
mysterious  stranger,  and  calls  the  spot  Peniel. 
For  he  says,  "  I  have  seen  God  face  to  face !  " 
The  biblical  narrative  of  the  building  of  the  Tem- 
ple represents  it  as  a  place  of  singular  and  awful 
sanctity.  "  I  have  halloived  this  i:)lace,  to  put  my 
name  there."  The  House  of  God  must  be  made 
"  exceeding  magnifical,  of  fame  and  glory  through- 
out all  countries."  The  wisest  of  monarchs  sum- 
moned to  its  erection  the  most  accomplished 
architects  of  the  age.  So  sacred  was  it,  that  it 
must  be  built  without  noise.  No  hammer  nor  ax, 
nor  "any  tool  of  iron,"  must  resound  in  it.  It 
must  grow  in  silence,  as  the  forests  grow. 

Such  is  the  Scriptural  idea  of  the  holiness  of  the 
House  of  the  Lord.  "  The  holy  place ;  the  place 
where  My  honor  dwelleth ;  the  gate  of  Heaven." 
So  the  Bible  portrays  in  brief  its  unutterable  sanc- 
tity. Picture  a  church-fair  in  the  Temple  of  Jeru- 
salem !  Conceive  of  a  raffle  for  a  gold-headed 
cane,  or  a  Chickering  piano,  in  the  "  Holy  of 
holies  ! "     Lnagine   the  humdrum  of  an  auction- 


270  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

sale  of  the  fag-ends  of  the  fair  from  the  altar  of 
sacrifice !  Do  not  such  things  remind  us  of  One 
who,  on  a  memorable  occasion,  found  a  use  for  "  a 
whip  of  small  cords  "? 

The  views  here  advanced  must  be  held  within 
bounds.  We  must  not  insist  on  the  impracticable. 
Spiritual  necessity  knows  no  law  of  good  taste. 
Leeway  must  be  given  and  taken  for  the  straits 
of  pioneer  churches  in  infant  settlements.  There, 
worshipers  have  often  to  remind  themselves  that 
the  Christian  Church  began  in  an  "  upper  room." 
It  has  often  sheltered  itself  in  caves  and  dens,  in 
forests  and  catacombs,  and  by  the  sea  at  low  tide. 
It  must  now  often  find  a  temporary  home  in  halls 
and  schoolhouses,  in  log-cabins  and  barn-lofts. 
One  of  the  most  helpful  services  of  an  Episcopal 
Church  that  I  ever  attended  was  held  in  a  ball- 
room. In  such  unchurchly  surroundings,  a  gen- 
uine Church  of  Christ  can  compete  successfully 
with  a  corrupt  one  in  gothic  cathedrals  under  a 
vaulted  roof,  amidst  memorial  windows  and  mas- 
sive pillars.  Any  place  is  made  sacred  by  the 
worship  of  the  living  God  by  living  souls. 

But  the  tiling  we  plead  for  is,  that,  in  the  older 
settlements,  the  House  of  God  should  be  in  keep- 
ing with  the  civilization  around  it.  In  cities,  where 
all  the  other  tokens  of  high  culture  abound,  let 
the  Christian  Temple  be  "exceeding  magnifical." 
In  thriving  towns,  where  men  build  for  themselves 
elegant  and  costly  homes,  let  the  home  of  their 
worship  be  churchly  in  itself  and  its  accompani- 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church,        271 

ments.  That  is  a  mistaken  economy  which  would 
retrench  expense  on  the  House  of  the  Lord  for 
charity's  sake.  The  story  of  the  alabaster  box 
settles  that  question  for  all  time.  Nothing  is 
extravagant  which  is  honestly  expended  for  the 
love  of  Christ. 

We  have  something  yet  to  learn  of  the  rudiments 
of  biblical  worship.  Our  Episcopal  brethren  are 
farther  advanced  than  we  in  this  line  of  Christian 
culture.  That  is  a  becoming,  because  a  natural 
and  sensible,  act  of  reverence,  in  which  they  begin 
and  end  the  services  of  public  worship  by  kneeling, 
or  bowing  the  head  in  silent  prayer.  Their  bishops 
exercise  a  most  valuable  authority  in  withholding 
consecration  from  a  church  burdened  with  debt. 
They  are  right  in  refusing  to  offer  to  the  Most 
High  a  treasure  over  which  the  auctioneer's 
hammer  is  suspended. 

That  was  a  refined  Christian  feeling,  whatever 
may  be  said  of  it  as  a  sanitary  error,  which  led 
our  fathers  to  bury  their  dead,  and  erect  tombs 
for  themselves,  underneath  the  temples  in  which 
they  and  their  godly  ancestry  had  worshiped,  or, 
better  still,  in  the  cheerful  ''  God's  acre  "  around 
them.  They  would  be  at  hand  when  the  morning 
dawned.  Reason  about  the  theology  of  it  as  we 
may,  who  can  help  sympathizing  with  the  senti- 
ment? The  man  who  can  stand  in  the  Campo 
Santo  at  Pisa,  only  to  jeer  at  the  faith  which  has 
transported  thither  earth  from  the  Holy  Land  to 
create  a  resting-place  for  the  dead,  is  none  the 


272  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

better  for  it.  Many  things  which  we  would  not 
do  now,  we  may  well  respect  in  the  usage  of  a 
former  age.  They  may  be  things  which,  in  other 
forms,  ought  to  perpetuate  their  spiritual  meaning 
in  this  brazen  age  of  ours. 


XXL 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH. 
PAET  n. 

The  Church  of  England,  and  the  American  off- 
shoot from  it,  have  been  wisely  conservative  of 
one  idea,  to  which  our  Puritan  traditions  are  not 
very  friendly,  and  yet  which,  for  that  reason,  we 
greatly  need  to  incorporate  into  our  ideal  of  the 
Christian  Church.     It  is  that  of  the  unity,  and  the 
consequent  moral  authority,  of  the  Church.     We 
have  drifted  to  a  perilous  extreme  in  our  passion- 
ate zeal  for  individuality  in  religious  life.    It  often 
degenerates  into  individuaKsm.    Then  the  sequence 
is  inevitable,  that  eccentric  and  crochety  believers, 
and   unbelievers   as  well,  who   can  find  a  home 
nowhere   else,  steal   one   from   a   Congregational 
Church.     This  is  vanity  and  vexation   of  spirit. 
We  have  contended,  not  too  stoutly  perhaps,  but 
altogether  too  singly,  for  the  liberty  of  a  church, 
as  contrasted  with  the  authority  of  the  Church. 
Our  inherited  faith,  in  this  respect,  is  truthful; 
but  it  is  not  all  the  truth.     A  principle  lies  over 
against  it.     That  principle  our  Lord  hallowed  in 
the  closing  scenes  of  his  life  ;  "  That  they  all  may 
be  one.^^  273 


274  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

By  just  so  much  as  we  undervalue  churchly 
unity,  do  we  lose  our  sense  of  churclily  authority. 
There  is  a  moral  power  which  nothing  else  creates 
in  numbers  compacted  and  unified.  This  power  is 
the  legitimate  prerogative  of  the  Church  of  Christ. 
A  church  can  possess  but  an  infinitesimal  fraction 
of  it,  and  that  often  infinitesimal  in  results.  But 
the  Chuixh,  the  temple  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  is 
well-nigh  omnipotent.  In  no  other  development 
is  the  principle  absolutely  true,  "  Vox  populi  vox 
Beir  Our  plans  of  church  extension  suffer  for 
the  want  of  the  unifying  principle  as  a  check  upon 
disintegration.  In  the  moral  as  in  the  material 
universe,  there  are  twin  forces  of  centripetal  and 
centrifugal  attraction.  Either  alone  works  ruin : 
both  in  union  create  order  and  beauty. 

The  Church  of  England  does  good  service  for 
us  all  in  conserving  this  churchly  idea  without 
crowding  it  to  the  tyranny  of  the  Romish  hie- 
rarchy. After  all  that  we  have  said,  and  must  say 
to  every  generation,  in  resistance  to  ecclesiastical 
despotism,  there  is,  even  in  ecclesiastical  despotism, 
an  underlying  truth  which  no  large  body  of  be- 
lievers can  afford  to  part  with.  Divine  hfe  is  con- 
centrated in  one  true  and  living  Church.  That 
article  in  the  Apostle's  Creed,  "  I  believe  in  the 
Holy  Catholic  Church,"  has  more  than  apostolic 
authority.  It  is  the  word  of  God.  It  represents 
the  power  which  is  to  convert  this  world  to  Christ. 

When  this  idea  of  churchly  authority  is  pre- 
sented in  its  biblical  simplicity,  the  common  sense 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         275 

of  men  approves  it.  Under  right  conditions,  the 
world  reveres  it.  On  a  certain  occasion,  an  im- 
mense meeting  of  Chartists  was  held  in  London, 
They  had  been  wrought  up  almost  to  ferocity  by 
the  atheistic  abuse  which  had  been  heaped  upon 
the  Christianity  of  the  age.  Charles  Kingsley 
made  his  way  through  the  crowd  to  the  platform ; 
and,  folding  his  arms  till  he  could  command  a  hear- 
ing, he  uttered  these  simple  words,  "  I  am  a  clergy- 
man of  the  Church  of  England  and  —  a  Chartist." 
The  bold  committal  of  the  Church  to  the  welfare 
of  the  laboring  people  awed  the  angry  assembly 
into  silence.  Their  ears  were  open  to  any  thing 
which  the  athletic  churchman  could  say  to  them. 
He  corrected  them,  rebuked  them,  proved  their 
mistakes,  denounced  their  vices,  heaped  scorn  upon 
their  crimes,  and  flung  the  gauntlet  to  their  un- 
godly leaders ;  and  they  listened  to  it  all  like  chil- 
dren. They  felt  that  he  had  the  right  to  say  it, 
as  no  other  man  than  a  Christian  minister  could 
have.  He  spoke  as  one  having  authority.  Behind 
his  words  and  him  was  the  great  body  of  Chris- 
tian believers  of  all  ages,  wliich  Christ  had  hal- 
lowed by  His  own  name. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  overestimate  the  pres- 
tige which  this  churchly  idea  has  given  to  the 
Church  of  England  in  the  civilization  of  the  Eng- 
lish people.  With  all  its  defects,  —  and  honest 
churchmen  know  that  these  are  not  few  nor  small, 
—  still  that  church  has  more  to  show  than  any 
other  Protestant  sect,  of  humble,  effective  service 


276  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays, 

in  humanizing,  comforting,  educating.  Christian- 
izing, the  masses  of  the  English  people.  I  have 
mentioned  the  name  of  Charles  Kingsley.  He  is  as 
good  a  representative  as  any  one  of  hundreds  of 
others,  of  a  self-denying  country-parson,  consecrat- 
ed to  his  work  as  a  minister  of  God  to  the  poor 
and  the  lowly.     Where  can  we  find  a  better  model  ? 

But  for  the  spiritual  elements  which  the  Church 
has  built  into  the  foundations  of  the  English  Gov- 
ernment, that  government  could  not  exist  a  year. 
We  democrats  marvel  at  the  loyalty  of  the  Eng- 
lish people  to  a  system  of  government  which  is 
unequal,  unnatural,  in  some  respects  tyrannical. 
To  our  sharp  republican  eye,  they  appear  stupid  in 
their  blind  allegiance.  But  it  is  no  mystery  when 
we  give  due  weight  to  one  thing.  Every  English- 
man from  his  infancy  upward  has  heard  prayers 
offered  for  the  queen,  the  royal  family,  and  the 
parliament  of  the  realm.  The  government  is  asso- 
ciated with  all  that  he  reveres  as  the  representative 
of  God.  That  infinite  idea  which  the  word  "  Law  " 
embodies,  exists  in  the  concrete  to  an  English- 
man's conscience,  as  it  seldom  does  to  that  of  a 
republican.  Loyalty  is  a  more  profound  sentiment 
than  mere  submission.  At  the  bottom,  it  is  a  reli- 
gious sentiment.     It  is  the  voice  of  conscience. 

This  it  is  which  has  kept  alive  the  English  Gov- 
ernment, though  rocking  on  the  billows  of  threat- 
ened revolution,  for  a  thousand  years.  And  it  is 
the  work  of  the  English  Church.  It  is  not  easy 
for  men  to  lay  violent  hands  on  that  for  which 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         277 

they  have  been  praying  all  their  life  long.  Some 
element  must  be  eliminated  from  their  life-blood 
before  they  will  do  it.  It  is  like  the  death-blow  of 
a  parricide  upon  his  mother.  I  repeat,  the  princi- 
ple of  reverence  runs  through  the  warp  and  woof 
of  England's  civilization,  and  her  ancient  church 
has  put  it  there.  She  owes  it  to  the  poor,  burnt 
hand  of  Cranmer.  With  all  her  national  defects 
and  follies  and  crimes,  England  is  a  blessing  to  the 
world.  That  will  be  a  sad  day  for  mankind  when 
she  falls,  if  fall  she  must,  from  the  summit  of 
nations.  It  is  not  yet  proved  that  we  of  the  new 
world  have  any  thing  to  offer  which  can  take  her 
place  as  a  civilizing  and  Christianizing  power  to 
the  nations.  And,  if  we  have,  the  best  of  it  is 
our  inheritance  from  England.  We  are  but  a 
New  England  in  our  mission  to  the  world.  We 
are  but  the  offspring  of  a  venerable  Mother :  our 
churches  are  but  the  offshoots  of  the  Mother- 
church.  The  churchly  idea  is  as  necessary  to  us 
as  to  her. 

True,  the  idea  of  the  individuality  of  the  soul, 
which  it  has  been  our  mission  to  develop,  is 
equally  potent.  We  will  not  be  faithless  to  it. 
But,  in  our  zeal  for  it,  we  have  been  too  oblivious 
of  the  twin-idea  represented  by  the  church  as  a 
unit.  These  two  ideas  are  correlatives.  Either 
works  ruin  without  the  other.  The  churchly  sen- 
timent has  special  power  in  the  forming  of  pop- 
ular opinions.  It  is  a  most  essential  force  in  every 
wise  reform.     Rid  it  of  the  pettiness  of  formalism. 


278  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

and  the  abuses  of  despotism,  and  the  craft  of 
priesthood,  and  it  is  the  most  potent  lever  of  re- 
form that  history  has  known.  The  world  will 
never  be  truly  reformed  till  it  is  converted  to 
Christ ;  and  it  will  never  be  converted  to  Christ, 
except  by  means  and  methods  which  bring  to  the 
front  the  Church  of  Christ.  Christ  lives  in  his 
Church.  Every  generation  creates  its  voluntary 
organizations,  which  aim  to  do  the  work,  and  rep- 
resent the  principles,  for  which  the  Church  exists ; 
but  they  all  work  at  disadvantage,  because  they 
do  not  represent  Christ.  In  the  end,  they  all  be- 
come effete,  and  pass  away.  The  Church  is  the 
only  representative  of  associated  and  compacted 
benevolence  which  has  a  destiny  of  conquest. 

The  Church  of  England,  furthermore,  does  good 
service  in  the  conservation  of  the  idea  of  the  his- 
toric continuity  of  the  Church.  We  can  not  defer 
to  her  claim  of  apostolic  succession  as  any  more 
valid  than  our  own.  Yet  in  her  articles  of  faith, 
and  in  her  forms  of  worship,  as  well  as  in  her  years, 
she  represents  a  venerable  and  eventful  history. 
Institutions  are  strong  which  are  built  into  ages 
of  accumulated  growth  and  achievement.  Human 
nature  everywhere  has  roots  in  the  past.  We  all 
have  historic  feelers,  which  reach  out,  like  the  ten- 
drils of  a  vine,  for  something  to  lay  hold  of,  and 
to  steady  our  faith.  A  thing  is  presumptively 
true  if  it  is  old.  A  faith  which  has  been  handed 
down  through  ages  of  inquiry  has  solidity  in  the 
very  fact  of  its  endurance.     Nothing  else  tries  a 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         279 

truth,  a  book,  an  institution,  a  system,  a  man,  as 
time  does.  Any  thing  that  has  lived  long,  has  so 
far  proved  its  right  to  live. 

This  principle  has  special  pertinence  in  matters 
of  religion.  To  religious  institutions,  time  is  a 
hint  of  eternity.  A  creed  which  remote  ages 
originated,  and  have  sent  down  to  later  days,  must 
have  in  it  central  truths  which  the  world  needs. 
A  Church  which  dates  back  for  its  beginnmg  to 
the  Abrahamic  pilgrimage  is  venerable  for  its 
power  of  continuance.  Its  longevity  is  a  history. 
The  spirit  of  worship  is  deepened  by  the  use  of 
liturgic  forms,  in  which  holy  men  and  women  of 
other  generations  have  expressed  their  faith.  It 
is  a  most  formative  element  in  the  religious  culture 
of  children,  that  they  are  taught  to  pray  in  the 
words  which  a  godly  ancestry  have  hallowed.  To 
offer  the  prayers  which  their  fathers  offered,  and 
to  sing  the  hymns  which  their  mothers  sang,  will 
set  going  sanctifying  influences  which  will  grow 
with  their  growth. 

Will  not  the  use  of  ancient  forms  degenerate 
into  nothing  but  form?  Always  possibly;  never 
necessarily.  I  seriously  question  whether  such 
repetition  induces  any  more  formality  than  the 
silent  attempt  of  listeners  to  follow  the  im- 
promptu thought  of  a  leader  in  extemporaneous 
prayer.  Prayer  impromptu  may  be  the  superior 
to  the  leader ;  but,  to  the  hearer,  the  following  is 
a  difficult  and  complicated  act.  Such  prayer  to 
the  hearer  is  a  series  of  surprises.     It  requires  a 


280  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

quick  mind  to  follow  it  with  no  loss  of  devotional 
sincerity.  To  children  it  is  commonly  a  dead  loss 
of  time.  They  do  not  participate  in  it,  and  are 
not  reverently  interested  in  it.  During  the  first 
fifteen  years  of  a  child's  life,  the  public  devotions 
of  our  churches  are  generally  a  blank. 

Try  the  experiment  with  an  intelligent  child 
of  eight  years.  Ask  him  what  he  was  thinking  of 
during  the  "  long  prayer."  I  venture  to  think  you 
will  be  startled  by  the  answer,  for  the  evidence 
it  will  give  you,  that,  for  any  religious  value  of 
the  service  to  him,  he  might  as  w^ell  have  been 
on  the  playground.  Is  this  the  best  we  can  do  to 
make  our  sanctuaries  contribute  to  the  religious 
culture  of  our  children? 

But,  granting  the  peril  of  formality  in  the  use 
of  an  ancient  liturgy,  the  form  which  ages  have 
sanctified  can  not  lose  all  its  sacredness  in  the  use. 
Probably  the  peril  is  nowhere  greater  than  among 
a  crowd  of  college-students.  Yet  in  Oriel  College, 
England,  the  same  form,  in  part,  is  in  use  to-day 
that  was  there  five  hundred  years  ago.  A  recent 
visitor  testifies  that  it  is  rehearsed  with  apparent 
reverence.  That  must  be  a  brutish  mind  which 
could  rehearse  it  otherwise.  Is  the  man  living, 
who  was  taught  to  repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer  at 
five  years  of  age,  who  can  gabble  it  at  the  age  of 
fifty?  John  Quincy  Adams,  in  his  eighty-fourth 
year,  repeated  every  night  the  old  stanza  of  infant- 
worship,  — 

"Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep,"  etc. 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         281 

I  have  recently  heard  it  said,  that,  as  the  air  of 
"Home,  Sweet  Home"  is  the  most  memorable 
music  in  the  world  for  its  power  over  the  human 
mind,  this  prayer  of  infancy  is  the  most  memor- 
able poetry.  One  can  well  believe  it.  This  and 
the  Lord's  Prayer  have  been  the  most  potent 
educators  of  infancy  and  childhood  that  the  Avorld 
has  known.  If  places  are  revered  for  their  anti- 
quity, and  their  association  with  the  great  and  good 
of  other  times,  much  more  is  the  language  sacred 
in  which  they  have  communed  with  God. 

This  reverence  for  historic  continuity  as  a  factor 
in  religious  culture  is  developed  in  no  other  Prot- 
estant sect  so  profoundly  as  in  the  Church  of 
England.  By  her  fidelity  to  it,  she  does  good 
service  to  the  Church  of  the  future.  The  only 
thing  in  which  other  denominations  cultivate  it 
largely  is  their  hymnology.  But  why  should  we 
not  foster  it  in  the  service  of  prayer,  as  well  as  in 
the  service  of  song?  We  teach  our  children  to 
pray  in  the  words  of  the  Lord's  Prayer.  Why 
should  we  stop  there  in  our  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  prayer  has  a  history  ?  Might  not  our  worship 
be  enriched  by  sometimes  using  the  prayers  of 
Chrysostom  and  St.  Augustine  and  Jeremy  Tay- 
lor? We  sing  the  hymn  of  St.  Bernard:  why  not 
pray  his  prayer  as  well  ? 

One  other  element  of  religious  life,  for  which 
we  have  reason  to  respect  the  Anglican  Church,  is 
that  of  order  in  religious  observances,  and  a  con- 
sequent distaste  for  reckless  change.     This  ten- 


282  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

dency  easily  runs  to  the  extreme.  A  Church 
is  unfaithful  to  the  chief  end  of  its  being  if  it  is 
nothing  but  a  conservative  machine.  Its  vener- 
able liturgy  is  an  abomination  if  it  is  the  service 
of  a  treadmill.  Yet  the  taste  which  is  thus  abused 
is  indispensable  to  permanent  religious  growth. 
There  is  no  conservative  power  without  it.  We 
are  creatures  of  routine  in  religion,  as  in  other 
things.  The  ScrijDtures  recognize  this ;  and  Nature 
indorses  it,  in  the  institution  of  the  sabbath.  Even 
the  animal  world  echoes,  in  its  dumb  way,  this 
demand  of  human  nature.  Our  beasts  of  burden 
fail  us  before  the  time  if  we  deny  them  their 
sabbaths.  Life  itself  is  distributed  by  sevens. 
The  stellar  universe  is  engineered  on  a  sublime 
system  of  routine,  more  exact  than  clockwork. 
Besides,  duties  which  have  to  do  with  God,  surely 
require  to  be  performed  with  reverent  decency; 
and  to  this,  fixedness  of  succession  and  recurrence 
is  auxiliary.  The  foundation  for  it  is  built  deep 
in  the  constitution  of  mind. 

Episcopal  usage,  in  this  respect,  though  to  the 
taste  of  many  it  is  too  restrictive  of  individual  lib- 
erty, yet  to  as  many  more  is  helpful  and  strength- 
ening. In  periods  of  religious  disorder,  when  zeal 
runs  away  with  wisdom,  we  find  reason  to  prize 
the  help  of  Episcopal  conservatism  and  propriety. 
A  reverent  faith  at  such  times  always  leans  that 
way.  The  late  Rev.  Dr.  Hawes  of  Hartford  was, 
by  temperament  and  training,  a  Puritan  of  the 
Puritans.     The  athletic  and  progressive  virtues  of 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         283 

his  Puritan  ancestry  were  as  innate  in  his  blood 
as  in  theirs.  Yet  at  a  time  of  religious  efferves- 
cence in  Connecticut,  when  zeal  ran  riot,  even  to 
profaneness,  he  said,  "  I  thank  God  for  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Episcopal  Church."  We  all  have 
reason  for  the  same  thank-offering,  when  popular 
reverence  is  overborne  by  religious  frenzy. 

This  suggestion  is  the  more  significant  because 
of  our  denominational  faith  in  revivals  of  religion. 
We  believe  in  revivals.  Our  history  is  full  of 
them.  Our  great  preachers  have  been  honored  of 
God  in  great  awakenings  of  religious  life.  Our 
theory  of  preaching  is  adjusted  to  the  quickening 
of  great  assemblies  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  The 
history  of  New  England  especially  has  been  illu- 
mined by  days  of  Pentecost  on  which  her  pulpit 
has  spoken  as  with  tongues  of  flame. 

One  consequence  of  a  great  history  is  the  dan- 
ger of  an  extreme.  The  better  the  thing,  the  more 
open  is  it  to  abuse.  Our  Puritan  denominations 
have  sometimes  encountered  the  peril  of  too  exclu- 
sive reliance  on  revivals  for  church-extension. 
Imperfect  education  in  the  ministry  tends  to  wild 
and  wasteful  ways  in  the  conduct  of  revivals. 
We  need  the  balancing  weight  of  more  conserva- 
tive tastes. 

We  can  not  follow  the  lead  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  this  thing  with  unqualified  trust.  We 
should  be  false  to  the  divine  providence  in  our  his- 
tor}^  if  we  should  do  that.  Yet  with  entire  fidel- 
ity to  our  own  traditions,  we  may  wisely  learn 


284  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

something  from  Episcopal  faith  in  ancient  ways. 
We  can  use  more  faithfully  the  principle  of  Chris- 
tian nurture  in  the  training  of  our  children.  We 
can  arrest  the  decline  of  infant  baptism  with  the 
whole  train  of  duties  and  privileges  A\diich  it 
involves.  We  can  assume  in  our  system  of  activ- 
ities that  the  children  of  the  Church  shall  be 
worthy  of  her  full  membership  in  the  natural  order 
of  religious  growth.  The  form  of  Episcopal  "  con- 
firmation "  is  not  essential,  but  the  thing  it  sig- 
nifies is  so.  We  need  it.  We  should  abandon  the 
theory  of  despair,  that  children  must  for  a  time  be 
reprobates,  and  then  be  converted  by  convulsive 
revolution.     That  theory  is  of  Satanic  origin. 

We  can  set  a  guard  also  more  faithfully  against 
the  abuses  of  revivals.  We  can  keep  our  pulpits 
out  of  the  hands  of  ignorant  or  half-educated 
men.  If  our  polity  is  not  such  that  it  can  protect 
our  churches  from  the  inroad  of  unw^orthy  pastors, 
we  should  create  a  polity  that  will.  We  can  give 
the  place  which  of  right  belongs  to  them,  to  men 
of  cultured  minds  and  refined  tastes,  and  not  com- 
pel such  men  to  take  back  seats  in  our  churches. 
Our  ways  of  doing  things  would  be  improved  by 
such  precautions  and  safeguards.  We  can  even 
afford  to  make  some  sacrifice  of  numbers  to  im- 
proved quality.  Some  ways  of  doing  things  which 
are  popular  among  us  we  should  silently  lay  aside. 

In  our  Puritan  communion,  there  are  other  ideas 
than  those  here  enumerated,  which  are  too  valua- 
ble to  permit  us  to  leave  the  Church  of  our  fathers 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church.         285 

in  search  of  wisdom.  We  will  rather  import  what 
we  need  than  to  exile  ourselves.  We  are  more 
than  pardonable  if  we  believe,  that,  on  the  whole, 
we  should  suffer  loss  if  we  should  exchange  our 
own  for  any  other  of  the  great  Churches  of 
Christendom.  We  confess  to  a  childlike  clinging 
to  the  Church  of  the  Pilgrims.  When  we  see 
what  it  has  made  New  England,  and  what  it  has 
achieved  for  our  country  and  for  the  world,  we 
can  not  help  feeling  as  De  Quincey  did,  in  view  of 
the  religious  history. of  England,  "I  thank  God 
that  I  am  the  child  of  a  magnificent  Church." 
Our  Pilgrim  faith  surely  has  more  than  a  "  magni- 
ficent "  history.  Oh  those  grand,  lofty,  unworldly 
souls !  How  lordly  were  their  aspirations,  yet 
how  childlike  their  trust !  How  profound  was 
their  sense  of  eternity,  and  how  close  their  ap- 
proach to  God !  They  are  sacred  to  us  above  all 
earthly  fame.  Princes  of  blood  royal  were  they 
all.  We  say  of  our  Jerusalem,  "  If  I  forget  thee, 
may  lay  right  hand  forget  her  cunning ! "  The 
child  who  is  born  to  such  a  faith,  should  give  to  it 
the  strength  of  his  manhood,  and  die  in  it  at  the 
end  exultingly. 

This,  like  all  rules  governing  a  life's  choices, 
must  be  held  with  elasticity  enough  to  enclose 
exceptional  cases.  Denominational  affinities  are, 
in  part,  matters  of  temperament.  There  is  an 
Episcopal  temperament,  as  there  is  a  Methodist 
temperament.  There  are  men  who,  though  born 
under  Puritan  constellations,  are  born  churclnnen. 


286  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

Not  their  tastes  only,  not  their  acquired  convic- 
tions chiefly,  but  their  inmost  spiritual  structure, 
inclines  them  to  conservative  opinions  and  fixed 
liturgic  forms.  They  take  in  more  spiritual  vital- 
ity from  an  Episcopal  atmosphere  than  from  any 
other.  Such  men  should  be  allowed  to  follow  the 
bent  of  their  natures  without  restrictive  criticism. 
Let  them  go  where  those  who  are  born  Puritans 
can  not  follow  them.  In  the  exercise  of  the  same 
liberty,  let  the  vast  majority  of  men  of  the  Puritan 
make  count  it  their  honor  to  abide  by  the  faith 
and  polity  of  their  fathers. 

Very  significant  testimony  to  this  effect  was  once 
uttered  by  that  accomplished  scholar  and  model 
churchman,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Washburn  of  New  York. 
If  I  do  not  mistake,  he  was  born  in  New  England, 
and  passed  his  youth  in  a  Congregational  church. 
In  early  manhood  he  took  orders  in  the  Episcopal 
Church,  and  became  one  of  the  brilliant  ornaments 
of  her  pulpit.  It  could  have  been  no  want  of  suc- 
cess m  his  life's  work  which  led  him  to  say  to  me 
near  the  close  of  his  life,  "My  experience  and 
observation  have  led  me  to  the  conviction  that  a 
young  man  of  Protestant  training  had  better  stay 
in  the  Church  in  which  God  has  given  him  birth." 
Much  as  he  loved  the  Church  of  his  adoption,  and 
proud  as  she  was  of  him,  he  thought,  that,  as  a 
rule,  the  gain  from  the  transition  was  not  sufficient 
to  warrant  so  grave  a  change. 

As  a  rule,  then,  we  of  Puritan  antecedents  can 
have  no  inducement,  on  the  whole,  to  abandon  our 


A  Study  of  the  Episcopal  Church,        287 

birthright.  But  we  may  enrich  it,  and  augment 
the  resources  of  our  religious  culture,  by  studying 
the  ideas,  and  importing  some  of  the  usages,  of  the 
old  Mother  Church  of  England. 


xxn. 

PRAYER  AS  A  STATE  OF  CHRISTIAN  LIVING. 

Prayer  in  real  life  is  an  object  of  discovery  and 
surprises.  Said  one  believer,  "  I  had  been  a  long 
time  in  the  Church,  before  I  found  out  that  prayer 
is  something  which  one  can  make  a  business  of." 
A  growing  experience  of  the  divine  life  will  con- 
stantly discover  something  new  in  prayer  as  a 
moral  force.  Three  stages  of  growth  are  com- 
monly discernible  respecting  it  in  the  Christian 
consciousness.  They  are,  prayer  as  a  refuge  in 
emergencies,  prayer  as  a  habit  at  appointed  times, 
and  prayer  as  a  state  of  continuous  living. 

The  privilege  and  power  of  prayer  in  this  last 
development  of  it  are  realized  by  comparatively 
few.  It  was  one  of  the  infrequent  expressions  of 
his  inner  life  by  the  late  Professor  Stuart,  "  I  have 
learned  that  the  value  of  prayer  does  not  depend 
so  much  on  its  intensity  in  moods,  or  its  regularity 
in  times,  as  on  its  constancy  as  a  continuous  way 
of  living.  "VVe  need  to  live  in  a  state  of  prayer." 
I  quote  his  remark  substantially  from  memory. 
Suffering  had  taught  him  the  truth  of  it.  Few 
men  reach  the  discovery,  except  through  some 
sort  of  disciplinary  trial.     In  spiritual  experience, 

288 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     289 

necessity  is  the  mother  of  discovery,  as  it  is  of 
invention  in  material  things. 

Our  fathers,  especially  of  the  earlier  generations 
in  this  country,  seem  to  have  understood  this 
phase  of  prayer  more  profoundly  than  we  do. 
They  understood  it  in  a  more  practical  way.  They 
prayed  for  what  they  wanted,  and  they  expected 
to  receive  it.  If  they  did  not  receive  it,  the  fail- 
ure set  them  upon  great  "searchings  of  heart." 
The  result  commonly  was,  that  they  prayed  again. 
They  had  faith  in  importunity.  They  noted  the 
fact,  that  the  promise,  "Ask  and  ye  shall  receive," 
was  given  in  immediate  sequence  to  a  parable 
which  represents  a  failure  in  prayer. 

There  is  something  sublime  in  their  application 
of  prayer  to  the  common  exigencies  of  life.  Look 
at  the  records  of  the  ancient  Courts  of  Probate 
in  New  England.  How  did  their  Wills  read? 
First  and  above  all,  "I  commit  my  soul  to  the 
Infinite  and  Almighty  God !  "  So  they  were  wont 
to  go  about  the  work  of  setting  their  house  in 
order  for  their  last  journey.  Look  at  their  reli- 
gious diaries.  They  are  childlike  in  the  devotional 
faith  they  record.  The  writers  take  God  into  their 
confidence  as  a  Friend.  They  make  their  business 
His  business.  If  one  of  them  moves  to  a  new  home, 
he  leaves  the  old  one,  and  consecrates  the  new  one, 
with  prayer.  If  he  buys  a  house  or  a  horse,  he 
prays  over  his  bargain.  A  harvest,  a  journey,  a 
"  cold  spell,"  a  dry  summer,  an  autumnal  freshet, 
—  the  things  which  make  up  the  talk  of  a  country 


290  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

village,  —  make  up  also  the  converse  of  good  men 
with  God.  Their  faith  was  not  restricted  to  Sun- 
days and  sermons,  to  funerals  and  epidemics. 

The  articles  of  their  daily  food  are,  each  one,  a 
gift  of  God,  for  which  thanksgiving  is  prompt. 
Many  times  in  the  history  of  those  days  is  the 
gift  of  Indian  corn  gratefully  acknowledged.  It 
was  a  new  esculent  to  them,  of  ready  and  abun- 
dant growth ;  and  it  often  saved  them  from  starva- 
tion. The  pious  chronicler  of  the  early  days  of 
Concord  writes,  "  The  Lord  is  pleased  to  provide 
great  store  of  fish  in  the  spring-time."  Again,  he 
records,  "  Let  no  man  make  a  jest  of  pumpkins ; 
for,  with  this  fruit,  the  Lord  was  pleased  to  feed 
His  people  till  their  corn  and  cattle  were  increased." 

In  such  familiar  uses  of  religion,  there  is  always 
danger  of  twaddle.  But  nothing  of  that  sort  mars 
the  manliness  of  the  olden  times.  Religion  was 
admirably  weighted  with  good  sense.  It  made  a 
compound  of  tough,  practical  fiber.  One  of  the 
ancient  customs  was,  to  invite  the  minister  to 
come  and  ask  the  divine  blessing  on  the  land  of 
the  farmer.  "Blessing  the  land,"  it  was  called. 
A  clergyman  once,  on  being  called  thus  to  visit  a 
farm  on  Cape  Cod,  found  it  in  a  miserable  plight 
for  the  want  of  good  husbandry.  "  No,"  said  he, 
"this  land  does  not  need  prayer :  it  needs  manure." 
Such  were  the  homely  and  sensible  ways  in  which 
the  Most  High  was  welcomed  to  their  j)lain  and 
frugal  homes.  Was  ever  Wordsworth's  "plain  liv- 
ing and  high  thinking  "  more  grandly  illustrated  ? 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     291 

Even  the  comic  side  of  prayer,  in  certain  condi- 
tions, did  not  escape  them,  yet  did  not  disturb 
them.  A  hundred  years  ago  a  good  citizen  of 
Sudbury  attended  the  "  Thursday  Lecture "  in 
Boston,  and  heard  the  preacher  pray  for  rain.  At 
the  close  of  the  service  he  took  the  preacher's 
hand,  and  said,  "  You  Boston  ministers,  as  soon  as 
a  tuhp  wilts  under  your  windows,  go  to  church, 
and  pray  for  rain  till  all  Sudbury  and  Concord  are 
under  water."  It  was  comical,  and  they  both  saw 
it.  But,  none  the  less,  they  believed,  that,  if  good 
men  prayed  for  rain,  they  got  rain.  Failure  was 
only  a  reason  for  praying  again.  It  was  very 
unscientific.  Be  it  so ;  but  a  grand  fact  which 
underlies  science  was  expressed  in  it.  The  grand- 
est life  man  can  live  was  in  it,  settle  it  with  science 
as  we  may. 

This  profound  faith  in  prayer  as  a  constant 
accompaniment  of  life  was  the  secret  of  the  ex- 
treme length  of  the  prayers  of  our  fathers.  They 
often  interpreted  literally  the  command,  "  Continue 
in  prayer."  Their  ministers  sometimes  indulged 
in  such  prolixity  of  devotion,  that,  if  one  of  their 
successors  should  imitate  them  now  on  a  Sunday, 
his  congregation  would  ask  for  his  resignation  on 
Monday.  It  was  because,  as  a  rule,  they  succeeded 
in  it.  Prayer  was  the  most  effective  force  they 
knew.  It  swayed  the  universe.  They  knew  noth- 
ing of  power  in  steam,  except  to  raise  the  lids  of 
their  teakettles.  They  did  not  know  lightning  by 
the  name  of  electricity.     They  did  not  know  that 


292  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

grayitation  held  their  feet  to  the  ground,  and  that, 
without  its  permission,  they  could  not  weigh  a 
pound  of  sugar,  or  adjust  their  knee-buckles.  The 
Corliss  engine  and  the  Cunarders  and  Hoe's  print- 
ing-press were  not.  If  they  had  been  predicted, 
they  would  have  been  treated  like  the  "  moon- 
hoax  "  of  later  days.  The  telephone  would  have 
savored  of  witchcraft  to  them.  They  would  have 
kept  a  fast-day  before  using  it.  But  they  knew 
prayer  as  the  superlative  of  all  forces.  They  used 
it  in  good  faith. 

They  prayed  long,  therefore,  because  it  was 
their  way  of  accomplishing  their  objects.  Objects 
which,  in  their  theory  of  life,  ranked  first  in  value, 
they  could  achieve  in  no  other  way.  In  vulgar  par- 
lance, "  it  paid  "  to  pray.  They  never  heard  the 
Italian  proverb,  —  or,  if  they  did,  they  heard  only 
to  scorn  it,  —  "  If  you  would  succeed,  you  must  not 
be  too  good."  To  their  notion,  goodness  was  the 
prime  success.  Every  thing  they  did,  therefore, 
they  baptized  with  prayer.  Where  Lord  Nelson 
would  have  broken  a  bottle  of  brandy  over  the 
prow  of  a  ship  at  the  launch,  they  would  have  sent 
for  the  minister  to  offer  a  prayer  for  safe  sailing. 
Their  praying  was  the  best  half  of  their  doing. 

"  Father  Wilson  "  of  the  First  Church  of  Boston 
often  prayed  two  hours  continuously.  Men  came 
in  from  Dedham  to  hear  his  prayers,  as  they  now 
do  to  hear  Phillips  Brooks's  sermons.  They  used 
to  caution  each  other  not  to  ask  him  to  pray  for  a 
thing  unless  they  were  prepared  to  have  it  with  all 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  JLiving,     293 

its  corollaries  and  implications.  Once,  at  least, 
he  was  begged  to  cease  praying  for  rain,  because, 
since  lie  began,  some  of  the  neighboring  towns  had 
been  flooded.  Science  may  say  what  it  will,  or 
can,  of  these  things.  But  there  was  a  real  life  in 
them.  Nothing  was  more  real  in  those  heroic  times. 
The  revolution  for  independence  was  not  a  more 
ef&cient  factor  in  the  world's  destiny  than  the 
power  of  prayer  which  was  put  into  history  by 
those  grand  believers.  After  all,  it  is  faith  in  the 
unseen  that  sways  the  world. 

Here,  also,  was  the  secret  of  their  resolute  and 
cheerful  temper.  It  is  an  egregious  mistake  to 
paint  them  as  men  of  disconsolate  conscience. 
That  they  were  sour-faced  men,  is  as  much  a 
fiction  as  the  "  Blue  Laws."  Mr.  Emerson  thus 
describes  them :  "  A  sadness  as  of  piled  mountains 
fell  on  them.  Life  became  ghastly,  joyless,  a  pil- 
grim's progress,  .  .  .  beleagured  round  with  doleful 
histories  of  Adam's  fall  and  curse  behind  us,  with 
doomsdays  and  purgatorial  and  penal  fires  before 
us ;  and  the  heart  of  the  seer  and  the  heart  of  the 
listener  sanl^  within  them."  This  is  the  heredi- 
tary notion  of  the  Pilgrims.  It  goes  down  from 
father  to  son,  bulging  with  accumulating  lies,  as  it 
advances,  till  its  figure  has  become  hideous. 

Never  was  there  a  more  stupid  blunder  in  the 
judgment  of  historic  characters.  They  were  not 
such  men.  Jeremiah,  the  prophet  of  the  broken 
heart,  was  not  their  model:  St.  Paul  was  their 
model.     Their  ministers  preached  a  score  of  ser- 


294  3Iy  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

mons  on  the  Epistles  to  the  Romans  to  one  on 
the  books  of  the  "  weeping  prophet."  Their  minds 
were  freighted  with  great  convictions.  They  lived 
in  the  rapids  of  great  events.  Their  piety  was 
sympathetic  with  both.  Such  piety  is  always  of 
the  resolute  and  cheering  type. 

It  has  been  said,  that  no  man  can  be  a  true  poet 
who  has  not  a  cheerful  temper.  It  is  more  strictly 
true,  that  no  man  can  be  a  Christian  of  the  Pilgrim 
type  without  such  a  temper.  No  man  or  woman, 
without  such  a  temper,  could  have  lived  through 
the  first  winter  at  Plymouth  after  the  landing  in 
1620.  Such  believers  live  in  light,  not  in  twilight. 
They  may  not  be  hilarious  men,  but  they  have  and 
give  the  good  cheer  of  indomitable  courage.  Our 
fathers,  especially  of  the  earlier  generations,  were 
men  of  that  guild.  They  were  men  of  the  meridian 
and  the  morning. 

It  is  not  given  to  men  of  "  ghastly,  joyless  life," 
whose  minds  are  intent  on  "  purgatorial  and  penal 
fires,"  to  do  the  deeds  our  fathers  did.  Downcast 
and  sour-faced  men,  weighed  down  by  "  a  sadness 
as  of  piled  mountains,"  are  not  the  men  who  build 
States,  and  emancipate  nations.  Men  who  walk 
with  eyes  on  the  ground,  "with  hearts  sinking 
within  them,"  do  not  found  colleges  in  their 
poverty,  when  the  gift  of  a  bushel  of  corn  is  a 
sacrifice.  They  do  not  form  churches,  and  free 
governments,  which  illuminate  the  globe  in  after- 
times.  It  takes  stalwart  and  uplooking  faith  to 
make   history.     Such   men  were  the  fathers.     If 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     295 

they  observed  more  fast-days  than  we  do,  they 
observed  more  days  of  thanksgivmg  as  well,  and 
did  it  more  religiously.  There  is  not  in  the 
world's  history  an  institution  which  blends  a  pro- 
found piety  with  social  festivity  more  beautifully 
than  the  New-England  Thanksgiving  Day  of  the 
olden  time.  That  and  the  English  Christmas  are 
twin  products  of  a  cheerful  religious  faith. 

Our  fathers  prayed  more  in  every  way  than  we 
do.  If  they  had  personal  conflicts  with  Satan, 
they  conducted  them  in  a  soldierly  way.  They 
fought  like  men  who  meant  to  win.  They  did 
win.  If  they  hanged  witches,  they  did  it  in  dead 
earnest,  believing  that  they  were  in  conscious  con- 
flict with  the  Devil.  They  grappled  with  the  arch- 
enemy with  stout  heart,  where  many  of  our  day, 
with  the  same  faith  in  malign  powers,  would  have 
run  away.  They  were  born  conquerors,  and  they 
had  the  reward  of  conquest.  They  lived,  in  the 
main,  a  life  of  victory  and  of  gladness.  The  fact 
is,  that,  like  all  successful  men  in  the  tug  of  life, 
they  had  no  time  to  mope ;  and  they  had  as  little 
disposition  as  time. 

But  the  grand  secret  of  their  gladsome  courage 
was  the  state  of  prayer  in  which  they  lived.  They 
had  faith  that  whatever  ought  to  interest  them  did 
interest  God.  Whatever  ought  to  engage  their 
faculties,  and  fill  up  their  life,  did  engage  the  per- 
fections of  God.  They  were  the  subject  of  divine 
decrees.  God  had  ordained  from  eternity  what- 
soever should  come  to  pass,  and  had  elected  them 


296  31y  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

to  be  His  instruments  in  bringing  things  to  pass. 
They  were  co-workers  with  God,  and  could  not  be 
overreached  or  defeated  in  life's  work.  Reverently 
they  talked  with  God  as  with  a  Friend.  Theirs 
was  the  faith  of  Abraham  and  Isaac  and  Jacob. 
Therefore  they  enjoyed  God.  If  ever  men  lived, 
who,  in  the  sense  of  lofty  courageous  hope,  enjoyed 
life,  they  were  such  men. 

Prayer  as  a  state  of  holy  living  is  abundantly 
recognized  in  the  Scriptures.  "  Continuing  instant 
in  prayer."  "  In  every  thing  by  prayer,  let  your 
requests  be  made  known."  ''  Continue  in  prayer, 
and  watch."  "Praying  always  with  all  prayer  and 
supplication."  Such  fragments  come  to  view  in 
the  Bible,  like  the  edges  of  geologic  strata  on  the 
surface  of  the  earth,  signs  of  the  deep  creation 
underneath.  Anna  continued  all  night  in  prayer. 
St.  Paul's  model  of  a  Christian  widow  was  one 
who  lived  in  prayer  night  and  day.  St.  Peter  in 
prison  was  remembered  by  the  church  in  prayer 
without  ceasing.  Far  back  in  the  elder  dispensa- 
tion, prayer  as  a  continuity  of  exalted  privilege 
dawned  on  the  Psalmist's  mind.  In  a  tone  of  tri- 
umph he  sings,  "At  evenmg  and  morning  and 
noon  will  I  pray."  Constancy  of  devotional  spirit 
is  inborn  in  the  nature  of  holy  living.  One  age 
has  handed  it  down  to  another  in  the  line  of  bib- 
lical revelation. 

Such  continuity  of  devotional  habit  gives  large 
place  in  a  godly  life  to  ejaculatory  prayer.  St. 
Augustine,  Madame  Guyon,  John  Tauler,  Luther, 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living,     297 

President  Edwards,  Edward  Payson,  and  a  host  of 
others,  were  often  overheard  in  fragmentary  col- 
loquy with  God.  Professor  Stuart  used  to  hallow 
his  learned  researches  by  mterspersing  audibly 
chants  of  the  Psalms  in  the  original  Hebrew.  On 
one  occasion,  in  taking  his  morning  walk,  he  ob- 
served in  a  door-yard  as  he  passed  it,  a  rare  and 
beautiful  specimen  of  a  French  dahlia.  He  paused ; 
and,  leaning  over  the  fence,  he  was  heard  ejaculat- 
ing in  low  tones  liis  thanksgiving  for  such  an  im- 
pressive proof  of  the  benevolence  of  God. 

Such  moments  of  holy  utterance  were  the  feed- 
ers which  gave  to  these  men  their  spiritual  strength. 
Who  can  tell  how  much  they  owed  even  of  their 
intellectual  vigor  to  such  spiritual  resources  ?  Ev- 
ery faculty  of  a  good  man's  mind  receives  incre- 
ment from  his  virtues.  Gifts  grow  on  the  strength 
of  graces.  Zinzendorf  used  to  write  little  notes 
to  "the  Lord  Christ."  This  is  what  every  reli- 
gious diary  ought  to  be.  No  human  eye  but  that 
of  the  author  should  ever  see  it.  Thomas  a  Kem- 
pis  says  of  Christ,  "  He  alone  is  a  w^orld  of  friends. 
That  man  never  knew  what  it  was  to  be  familiar 
with  God,  who  complains  of  the  want  of  friends 
while  God  is  with  him." 

We  need  the  state  of  prayer  as  a  counteracting 
force  to  the  state  of  temptation  in  which  we  are 
always  living.  In  such  a  world  as  this,  life  itself 
is  one  long  temptation.  The  defense  needs  to  be 
proportionate  to  the  peril.  The  spirit  of  our  age 
is  skeptical  of  the  reality  of  Satan.     Few  of  us 


298  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

have  the  vivid  faith  which  our  fathers  had  in  his 
personality  as  the  chief  of  a  malignant  empire. 
We  have  reason  to  believe  his  subject  angels  to  be 
a  great  multitude.  A  "  legion  "  of  them  once  held 
possession  of  one  soul.  They  give  to  temptation 
a  fearful  force  and  perilous  ubiquity.  We  have  to 
contend  with  principalities  and  powers.  No  man 
is  beyond  the  reach  of  their  malign  enchantments. 
Here,  there,  and  everywhere,  now,  then,  and 
always,  personal  and  mighty  foes  are  at  hand  to 
allure  men  to  ruin.  If  spiritual  attributes  give 
any  advantage  over  minds  enclosed  in  fleshly  forms, 
tempters  have  that  advantage  in  this  world  of  ours. 
We  do  not  know  that  they  ever  slumber,  or  are 
ever  absent.  That  saintly  woman  was  a  wise  one 
who  taught  her  children  to  take  example  from  the 
Devil  as  the  most  industrious  being  in  the  created 
universe.  There  is  but  one  refuge  for  a  mortal 
man  living  under  such  conditions  of  spiritual  trial. 
It  is  to  live  in  a  state  of  prayer  as  constant  as  the 
peril.  God  has  ordained  no  other  means  by  which 
we  can  summon  from  unseen  worlds  spiritual  allies 
to  re-enforce  our  conflict  with  spiritual  foes. 

Luther  may  have  had  an  exaggerated  estimate 
of  the  attributes  of  Satan,  and  of  his  liberty  of 
access  to  human  souls.  His  imagination  realized 
the  presence  of  the  Adversary  in  visible  and  audi- 
ble signs.  He  heard  voices  threatening  or  seduc- 
tive over  his  left  shoulder.  "  Ha  !  you  are  there, 
—  are  you  ?  "  was  the  salutation  he  once  gave,  in 
response  to  an  evil  thought  which  he  believed  to 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     299 

be  a  suggestion  from  the  Devil.  His  vision  of 
Satan  in  his  cell  at  Erfurt,  when  he  threw  his  ink- 
stand at  him,  may  have  been,  probably  was,  a 
strained  and  unnatural  fancy,  yet  possibly  not. 
The  Reformer  lived  in  an  age  when  Satan  was  at 
large  in  great  liberty.  Abnormal  manifestations 
of  his  presence  may  have  been  becoming  to  the 
crisis,  as  they  seem  to  have  been  in  our  Saviour's 
lifetime,  and  as  in  the  judgment  of  some  they  are 
now,  in  some  of  the  phenomena  of  spiritualism. 
At  all  events,  Luther's  extreme,  if  it  was  such, 
was  a  safer  error  than  the  incredulous  security 
from  malign  enchantments  in  which  men  of  our 
times  are  living.  Spiritual  perils  are  the  more 
fatal  for  being  unseen  and  unheard.  Odorless 
malaria  is  the  most  destructive  to  life.  Burglars 
enter  our  homes  in  velvet  slippers,  and  in  the  dark. 
Their  dark-lanterns  do  not  waken  us  from  our 
slumber,  though  held  at  our  bedside.  So  do  in- 
visible tempters  creep  stealthily  upon  us  and 
around  us,  night  and  day.  Our  unbelief  in  their 
existence  is  their  safety  from  detection.  Every 
man  has  an  unseen  enemy  at  his  left  shoulder. 
Better  is  Luther's  credulity  than  our  dead  faith. 
Such  a  continuous  state  of  peril  demands  a  con- 
tinuous state  of  prayer  as  its  offset  and  counter- 
action. ^ 

We  need  the  state  of  prayer  also  as  a  corrective 
of  the  restlessness  and  turmoil  which  life  in  this 
world  engenders.  Our  life  is  full  of  distractions 
from  spiritual  peace.     We  call  God  our  Father. 


300  My  Study :  and  Other  Assays. 

He  is  a  wise  Father ;  He  does  not  cosset  His  child ; 
He  inclines  rather  to  the  robust  discipline.  Life 
to  many  of  us  has  a  good  deal  of  rough  experience, 
like  that  of  the  backwoods.  We  often  find  our- 
selves in  tumultuous  agitations  w^hich  seem  to  for- 
bid communion  with  God.  Emerson  says  that 
''the  human  race  are  afflicted  with  St.  Vitus' 
dance.  A  man  acts,  not  from  one  motive,  but 
from  many  shifting  fears  and  short  motives.  It  is 
as  if  he  were  ten  or  twenty  less  men  than  himself, 
acting  at  discord  with  one  another;  so  that  the 
result  of  most  lives  is  zero." 

Is  it  so  ?  Where,  then,  shall  we  find  the  unify- 
ing force  ?  How  shall  we  obtain  concinnity  and  a 
purpose?  How  otherwise  than  by  coming  into 
God's  atmosphere,  and  living  at  one  with  Him? 
Only  so  shall  we  emanci^^ate  ourselves  from  the 
thralldom  of  anxieties  and  vacillations  which  take 
all  joy  out  of  life.  So  shall  a  great  peace  come  to 
us.  Not  the  most  gifted,  but  the  most  godly,  know 
most  of  this. 

Often  it  is  a  discovery  to  us  that  the  consistence 
of  our  character  can  not  stand  the  strain  of  pro- 
longed disease.  Our  best  resolves  give  way  before 
physical  pain.  The  four  walls  of  a  sick-room  are 
like  those  of  the  prison  so  contrived  that  one  of 
them  approached  its  opposite  on  rollers  a  foot  in  a 
day  till  it  crushed  the  prisoner.  Death  found  him 
a  raving  maniac.  The  monotony  of  a  hopeless 
sick-room  is  intolerable  to  one  not  inured  to  it  by 
long  discipline.     Surprises  of  evil  overcome  us  in 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living,     301 

hours  of  nervous  prostration.  The  first  thing  that 
disclosed  to  Dr.  Chalmers  the  futility  of  the  moral- 
ism  which  was  all  the  religion  he  had  when  he 
began  his  pastorate  at  Kilmany,  was  the  discovery 
that  it  could  not  bear  the  scrutiny  of  the  sick-bed. 
When  brought  face  to  face  with  death,  he  found 
out  his  need  of  something  better  than  scientific 
culture  to  give  him  rest. 

Rest  in  God  is  the  great  necessity  of  our  nature 
when  any  thing  brings  a  strain  upon  the  fiber  of 
our  moral  being.  Sin  tends  always  to  unrest.  It 
often  creates  tumults  of  conflict,  and  shocks  of  self- 
discovery.  A  keen  conscience  is  an  alert  foe  to 
peace  of  mind,  unless  it  is  appeased  by  something 
which  brings  the  soul  into  sympathy  with  God  in 
its  choices.  The  complacency  of  God  is  the  only 
thing  that  can  give  a  man  complacency  in  himself. 
Unsettled  questions  of  duty,  also,  often  create 
perturbations  and  alarms.  Doubts  of  truth  in 
some  minds  open  abysses  of  despair.  Such  are 
contingencies  in  even  a  good  man's  life  of  proba- 
tionary discipline. 

Even  the  innocent  cares  of  life  are  not  always 
innocent  of  encroachment  on  mental  rest.  Those 
which  Montgomery  calls  "  the  insect  cares,"  some- 
times are  so  numerous,  that,  like  an  atmosphere 
full  of  stinging  creatures,  they  make  life  a  burden. 
The  shame  a  man  feels  for  his  minding  them  is 
itself  a  discomfort.  Pascal  lamented,  that,  in  cer- 
tain moods,  he  could  not  bear  the  alighting  of  a  fly 
on  his  face  without  irritation.     One  godly  man 


302  3Iy  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

wept  because  he  lost  his  self-control,  and  swore 
profanely  at  the  sting  of  a  hornet. 

Toil  for  a  living  in  such  conditions  as  this  world 
furnishes  is  a  daily  discomfort.  Human  labor  is 
heavily  weighted  with  human  wrongs  and  humilia- 
tions. The  common  conception  of  it  is  that  of 
conflict  with  other  men.  A  battle  with  the  world, 
we  call  it :  as  if  another  man's  success  were  our 
failure.  Competitions,  heart-burnings,  rivalries, 
deceits,  overreachings,  treacheries,  enmities,  and 
opj)ressions  make  up  large  jiortions  of  the  life  of 
trade.  Penitentiaries  and  dungeons  are  symbols 
of  our  laws.  Both  are  constructed  for  self-defense. 
We  have  little  notion  of  what  labor  for  a  liviug 
would  be  in  a  world  not  racked  and  ruined  by  sin. 
Think  of  a  store  of  jewelry,  or  a  bank,  without 
lock  or  bolt !  Imagine  a  world  in  which  protec- 
tive laws  and  retributive  penalties  should  be  un- 
known !  Conceive  of  a  world  in  which  no  state 
should  contain  a  prison,  and  no  county  a  jail ;  and 
in  which  a  rifle  and  a  revolver  should  be  unintel- 
ligible relics  of  a  lost  art !  What  a  life  of  labor 
in  such  a  world  would  be,  labor  in  this  world  is 
not. 

To  encounter  happily  the  conditions  of  self- 
support  in  this  world,  we  need  to  make  life  a 
continuous  prayer.  We  must  retire  into  God's 
silence,  in  the  stillness  of  a  state  of  prayer.  We 
need  that  condition  of  things  of  which  Emerson 
gives  us  a  glimpse,  when  he  says,  "  When  a  man 
lives  with  God,  his  voice  shall  be  as  sweet  as  the 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     303 

murmur  of  a  brook  and  the  rustle  of  the  corn." 
Poets  send  us  to  the  works  of  nature  for  it.  Very 
good,  if  in  the  works  of  nature  we  discover  God's 
thoughts.  Men  in  the  tug  of  life  and  the  antago- 
nisms of  trade  must  know  where  to  find  the  lull 
which  nothing  else  gives  to  a  perturbed  spirit  but 
the  consciousness  of  being  one  with  a  personal 
God.  This  is  the  Psalmist's  thought,  when  he 
speaks  of  the  "light  of  God's  countenance."  With- 
out this  divine  incandescence,  nature  is  a  cheat. 
An  oak  is  no  more  than  a  bramble-bush.  Orion 
is  no  more  than  a  firefly.  Nothing  above,  beneath, 
around,  has  in  it  the  divine  idea.  Nothing,  there- 
fore, gives  help  or  compensation. 

Sir  Fowell  Buxton  was  engaged  for  twenty 
years  in  the  British  Parliament,  in  a  conflict  with 
almost  all  the  dominant  forces  of  the  empire,  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  slaves.  To  this  he  added 
the  distracting  cares  of  an  immense  business  inher- 
ited from  his  father.  Near  the  close  of  his  life  he 
wrote  to  his  son,  "  The  experience  of  my  life  is, 
that  events  always  go  right  when  they  are  under- 
taken in  the  spirit  of  prayer.  I  have  found  assist- 
ance given,  and  obstructions  removed,  in  a  way 
which  has  convinced  me  that  some  secret  power 
has  been  at  work." 

This  is  what  we  all  need,  —  ability  to  carry  on 
the  complicated  affairs  of  a  laborious  life  with  a 
sense  of  rest  in  a  secret  force,  not  our  own,  which 
is  all  the  while  co-operating  with  us.  Meditation 
and  prayer  are  twin-helpers  to  this  sx3iritual  repose. 


304  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

Tlie  habit  of  "  undertaking  things  in  the  spirit  of 
prayer  "  is  the  secret  of  happiness  in  a  life  of  toil. 
The  busiest  and  most  heavily  burdened  life  is  full 
of  spiritual  analogies,  by  the  aid  of  which  thought 
may  alternate  in  quick  succession  between  earth 
and  heaven.  Thus  the  most  intense  and  diversified 
life  may  be  enclosed  in  God's  life,  and  made  tribu- 
tary to  His  plans.  In  no  other  way  can  we  live  in 
sympathy  with  God,  or  be  assured  of  His  sympathy 
with  us. 

The  fact  deserves  emphasis,  that  prayer,  as  a 
continuous  state  of  religious  living,  is  independent 
of  conditions.  No  calamity  of  life  can  overpower 
it,  or  make  it  untimely.  It  becomes  an  atmosphere, 
pure,  life-giving,  tonic,  invariable.  It  is  difficult 
for  religious  moods  to  exist  under  its  equal  press- 
ure. In  glad  hours,  it  is  a  joy ;  and  in  sad  hours, 
a  comfort.  It  keeps  life  in  equilibrium  against 
disturbing  forces.  Like  a  finely  finished  chro- 
nometer, it  is  self-adjusting  to  variations  of  tem- 
perature. St.  Paul  struck  out  a  scintillation  of 
its  virtue,  when  he  said,  "  If  God  be  for  us,  who 
can  be  against  us  ?  "  We  believers  of  the  common 
stock  come  to  it  often  as  a  discovery  which  takes 
us  by  surprise.  We  respond,  "Surely  enough. 
Who  ?     Where  is  the  fury  of  the  oppressor  ?  " 

Yet  another  fact  deserves  mention.  It  is,  that 
every  human  life  contains  peculiarities  of  proba- 
tionary trial.  Every  man  finds  that  Ms  lot  is,  in 
some  respects,  singular.  As  no  two  faces  are 
alike,  no  two  lives  are  the  same  in  point  of  disci- 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     305 

pline.  Each  one  seems  to  be  singled  out  for  a  test 
of  character,  which  no  other  one  is  called  to  bear 
with  the  same  degree  of  severity. 

The  proverb  says  that  every  house  has  its  skele- 
ton. It  is  more  forcibly  true,  that  every  man  has 
his  thorn.  St.  Paul  had  his  :  we  all  follow  in  our 
several  ways.  One,  like  the  apostle,  has  his  thorn 
in  bodily  disease.  A  disease  develops  itself,  of 
which  he  says,  "  Any  thing  but  this  ! "  Another 
discovers  his  burden  in  an  infelicity  of  tempera- 
ment, which  keeps  him  in  a  chronic  state  of  self- 
contempt.  A  third  is  prematurely,  and,  as  it 
seems  to  him,  ruthlessly,  retired  from  active  use- 
fulness, in  which  he  does  not  think  it  vanity  in 
him  to  believe  that  he  did  the  world  some  service. 
He  vexes  liimself  in  secret  with  the  problem  why 
God  should  have  deprived  Himself  of  so  valuable 
an  auxiliary.  A  fourth  thinks  he  is  selected  —  and 
perhaps  he  is  —  for  one  of  those  clusters  of  sorrows 
which  have  created  the  proverb,  that  "  misfortunes 
never  come  singly." 

Some  men  succumb  to  such  peculiarities  of  dis- 
cipline. Faith  expires.  Any  thing  else  they  could 
have  borne,  but  why  this  ?  Another  man's  trials 
they  could  have  met  serenely,  but  their  own  seem 
a  great  mystery.  It  is  not  difficult  to  most  of  us 
to  bear  the  troubles  of  other  men.  But,  when  our 
own  are  the  test  of  faith,  no  spirit  is  left  in  us,  if 
we  belong  to  the  class  of  these  elect  sufferers. 
The  whole  head  is  sick,  and  the  whole  heart 
faint. 


306  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

For  such  specialities  of  probationary  destiny, 
we  need  a  special  welcome  to  the  recesses  of  the 
hidden  friendship  of  God.  Else  we  may  come 
suddenly  to  the  border-line  of  despair.  Every 
man  carries  the  possibility  of  suicide  in  his  des- 
tiny. We  can  never  know  what  might  have  been, 
but  for  the  loving  care  of  God  in  forestalling  our 
weakness  in  critical  exigencies.  To  gain  the  refuge 
of  such  hidden  life,  we  need  unwavering  fellowship 
with  Christ.  We  need  sometimes  to  rise  up  with 
Him  a  great  while  before  day,  and  to  depart  into 
a  solitary  place,  continuing  all  night  in  prayer; 
"  the  morning-star  finding  Him  where  the  evening- 
star  left  Him." 

Great  emergencies  are  the  final  test  of  great 
forces.  If  ever  a  suspense  of  faith  in  a  life  of 
prayer  might  reasonably  take  place,  we  should 
imagine  that  such  a  collapse  would  attend  that 
extreme  of  human  woe  in  which  reason  itself  gives 
way.  What  can  prayer  do  for  a  mind  which  has 
ceased  to  be  a  mind?  What  result  an  induction 
from  the  history  of  insane-asylums  might  give,  I 
do  not  know.  But,  in  the  unwritten  history  of 
insanity,  facts  are  not  wanting,  which,  so  far  as  they 
go,  tend  to  prove  that  the  long  use  of  prayer  in 
the  habits  of  a  healthy  religious  life  generates  a 
remedial  force  which  reaches  over  into  the  mind's 
derangements  and  entanglements,  and  helps  to 
bring  it  again  into  self-possession.  Having  long 
moved  in  the  grooves  of  prayer,  the  lost  mind,  by 
means  of  those  grooves,  has  sometimes  found  its 


Prayer  as  a  State  of  Christian  Living.     307 

way  back  to  the  living  world.  An  instance  from 
real  life  will  illustrate  tliis. 

Many  years  ago  a  clergyman  in  New  England, 
after  a  long  period  of  godly  service,  became,  as  his 
physicians  and  friends  believed,  hopelessly  insane. 
So  far  as  the  diagnosis  of  cerebral  disease  could 
determine,  remedy  was  impossible.  They  only 
waited,  praying  for  his  release.  His  delusions, 
among  other  vagaries,  took  at  last  the  form  of  reli- 
gious melancholy.  The  unpardonable  sin  weighed 
grievously  upon  his  conscience.  He  told  his  at- 
tendants, that  he  had  been,  through  all  his  life,  a 
hypocrite.  He  thought  it  had  been  revealed  to 
him  that  he  was  going  to  hell.  He  had  been  told 
that  no  other  place  in  the  universe  was  fit  for  him, 
or  he  for  it.  The  calmness  of  despair  brooded  over 
his  days  and  nights. 

It  was  useless  to  reason  with  a  mind  which  had 
no  reason.  But  at  last,  one  of  his  clerical  brethren 
resolved  on  an  experiment.     He  said  to  Iris  afflicted 

brother  substantially  this:  "Well,  Dr.  B ,  it 

may  be  true.  If  God  has  revealed  it  to  you,  it 
must  be  so.  Doubtless,  some  appalling  examples 
of  hypocrisy  and  retribution  must  be  held  up  as  a 
warning  to  the  universe,  and  you  may  be  one  of 
them.  Will  it  not  be  wise  for  you  to  lay  your 
plans  for  it,  till  you  are  otherwise  instructed,  and 
think  what  you  will  do  in  hell  ?  You  will  not  wish 
to  be  surprised  there  by  an  unknown  experience. 
What  will  you  do  with  yourself  ?  How  will  you 
fill  up  the  time  there  ?  "     At  this  weird  suggestion, 


308  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

the  good  man's  religious  faith  first  righted  itself, 
and  sprang  into  its  wonted  channel  of  operation. 
He  replied,  "I  will  pray  the  very  first  thing.  I 
will  set  up  a  prayer-meeting  the  very  first  day!"* 
At  that  juncture  of  tangled  thought,  in  which  he 
"  saw  men  as  trees  walking,"  his  reason  began  to 
right  itself.  That  also  sprang  into  its  accustomed 
logical  grooves.  He  thought  it  at  first  to  be  a  new 
discovery,  that  wherever  a  sinner  could  pray,  and 
where  God  was  within  hearing,  that  could  not  be 
hell.  From  this  feeble  hold  upon  his  old  trains  of 
ideas,  he  proceeded  till  his  old  faith  came  back  to 
him  in  full,  and  with  it  his  old  thinking-power. 
He  lived  for  a  short  time  after,  and  died  in  full 
possession  of  his  faculties  and  his  Christian  faith. 

Isolated  facts  like  these  must  not  be  laden  with 
inferences  which  they  do  not  bear.  But  taken  in 
connection  with  other  facts  illustrative  of  the  sani- 
tary effect  of  religious  services,  and  specially  of 
Christian  song,  upon  the  condition  of  the  insane, 
they  do  give  something  more  than  the  interest  of 
conjecture  to  the  idea  that  a  profound  affinity 
exists  between  worship  and  mental  health.  Prayer 
is  an  element  of  moral  being  which  life  craves. 
Why  should  it  not  be  a  remedial  agent  in  mental 
disease  ?  Nothing  in  psychological  or  physical 
science  hints  the  contrary. 


XXIII. 

WHY  DO  I  BELIEVE  CHRISTIANITY  TO  BE  A 
REVELATION  FROM  GOD? 

An  esteemed  correspondent  requests  me  to  give 
publicly  an  answer  to  this  inquiry.  In  reply,  I 
must  premise  that  my  faith  in  Christianity  is  large- 
ly an  inheritance.  I  trace  it  back  through  the 
life-blood  of  nine  generations  of  godly  forefathers. 
I  am  not  vain  enough  to  believe  that  I  have  any 
such  independence  of  ancestral  influences  that  I 
can  approach  the  question  in  a  state  of  mental 
equipoise.  I  do  not  believe  such  a  state  to  be 
either  necessary  or  desirable.  The  laws  of  hered- 
ity are  among  the  factors  which  create  any  wise 
man's  belief  in  a  system  of  religion.  The  attempt 
to  be  rid  of  them  can  only  create  a  bias  the  other 
way.  They  may  be  reasonably  tested :  they  can 
not  be  reasonably  ignored. 

In  testing  my  ancestral  faith,  I  find  it  confirmed 
by  the  following  facts ;  namely,  — 

1.  In  examining  the  sacred  books  of  Christian- 
ity, I  find  there  a  Person  whose  being  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  supernatural  disclosure  of  God.  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  great  miracle  of  history.  I  can  not 
reconcile  His  character  and  life  with  the  theory 

309 


310  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

that  He  was  man  only.  I  do  not  know  enough  of 
the  psychology  of  infinite  being  to  deny  the  pos- 
sibility, or  even  to  question  the  probability,  that 
deity  and  humanity  are  blended  in  one  person.  It 
is  as  likely  to  be  true  as  the  opposite.  It  must  be 
determined,  as  other  possible  things  are,  by  cred- 
ible proofs.  Those  proofs  point  to  such  a  mysteri- 
ous blending  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Napo- 
leon expressed  the  natural  belief  of  a  fair-minded 
man  of  the  world  who  came  to  the  question  with 
a  balanced  mind  open  to  the  weight  of  evidence, 
when  he  said,  "  I  know  man,  and  I  declare  to  you 
that  Jesus  Christ  was  not  a  mere  man."  If  Jesus 
was  not  God,  His  words  disprove  His  honesty,  and 
His  actions  disprove  His  good  sense. 

In  the  four  fragmentary  narratives  of  His  birth 
and  life  and  death,  I  find  peculiarities  which  are 
unparalleled  in  biographical  literature.  No  evi- 
dence appears  of  imbecility  or  insanity  or  knavery. 
Yet  one  of  these  must  be  true  of  Him  if  He  was  a 
man,  and  no  more.  He  makes  assertions  respect- 
ing the  significance  of  His  own  Being  to  all  man- 
kind, which  no  honest  man  would  make  in  his 
right  mind  if  he  were  man  only.  He  assumes  an 
authority  and  a  relationship  to  the  Most  High, 
which  a  sane  man  could  not  honestly  make  if  he 
were  not  in  some  mysterious  sense  conscious  of 
identity  with  the  Most  High.  He  takes  upon 
Himself  the  responsibility  of  a  mission  to  this 
world  which  no  man  could  believe  to  be  laid  upon 
himself,  and  could  seriously  undertake  to  discharge. 


Christianity  a  Revelation  from  Qod,        311 

without  a  loss  of  reason,  unless  it  were  accom- 
panied by  a  consciousness  of  divine  power  to  sus- 
tain it. 

By  the  laws  of  mental  disease  as  recognized  by 
sanitary  science,  a  mind  conscious  of  only  human 
resources,  and  yet  honestly  believing  itself  to  be 
the  Saviour  of  a  fallen  world  through  atoning 
pains,  should  become  a  maniac.  The  mental  equi- 
poise of  this  mysterious  Being  under  the  disclos- 
ures of  His  mission  to  His  own  consciousness,  and 
in  the  awful  solitude  of  it,  as  it  advanced  to  its 
fulfillment,  is  itself  a  miracle.  It  is  a  token  of  a 
Power  within,  not  limited  by  human  conditions, 
nor  subject  to  human  infirmities.  It  is  not  in 
human  nature  to  bear  the  consciousness  of  such  a 
mediatorial  relation  between  God  and  man  with- 
out a  wreck  of  reason  hopeless  and  irremediable. 
The  psychological  phenomena  developed  by  the 
life  of  this  anomalous  Person  are  inexplicable  upon 
any  theory  of  His  nature,  but  that  affirmed  by  St. 
John,  "  The  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word 
was  God." 

2.  I  find,  further,  in  the  teachings  of  this  anom- 
alous Being,  the  germs  of  a  system  of  ethics  which 
can  not  be  of  human  origin.  That  is  to  say,  it  is 
unlike  man  as  he  has  expressed  himself  in  other 
ways.  Fragments  of  it  are  found  elsewhere.  But 
as  a  whole,  and  specially  in  its  freedom  from 
absurdities  and  excrescences,  it  stands  alone  in  the 
history  of  human  thought.  It  is  as  remarkable  for 
what  it  does  not  say,  as  for  what  it  does.     In  the 


312  My  Study :  and  Other  Essays. 

truthfulness  and  power  of  its  appeal  to  the  best 
intuitions  of  the  human  mind,  it  is  unequaled.  I 
can  not  account  for  it  on  any  other  theory  so  prob- 
ably as  on  that  which  derives  it  from  the  mind  of 
God. 

Other  religions  profess  to  be  founded  on  sacred 
books.  They  contain  the  elements  of  ethical  sys- 
tems. In  the  form  of  aphorism  and  of  ritual,  they 
attempt  a  moral  government  of  human  life.  One 
feature  marks  them  all  as  the  work  of  imperfect 
mind,  and  of  mind  debilitated  in  its  intellectual 
processes  by  moral  infirmities.  It  is  the  inter- 
mingling with  fragmentary  truth  of  much  that  is 
false,  much  that  is  petty,  and  much  that  is  impure. 
They  are  in  this  respect  such  as  might  reasonably 
be  expected  from  an  uninspired  human  intellect. 
If  Christianity  were  of  human  origin,  we  should 
look  for  similar  excrescences  in  its  ethical  teach- 
ings. We  do  not  find  them.  We  find  nothing 
that  lowers  the  dignity  of  moral  truth,  and  noth- 
ing that  offends  the  purity  of  a  good  conscience. 
It  is  the  only  religion  known  to  history  which 
appreciates  woman.  This  is  a  remarkable  hint  of 
its  probable  origin.  Taken  by  itself,  isolated  from 
other  evidences  of  its  source,  the  Christian  ethics 
would  not  be  proof  conclusive  that  Christianity  is 
from  God ;  but  its  character  fits  in  with  other 
proofs  so  strikingly  that  no  other  theory  of  its 
origin  is  so  probable. 

3.  I  find  in  other  teachings  of  the  Christian 
books,  and  especially  in  the  Epistles  of  the  New 


Christianity  a  Revelation  from  Crod.        313 

Testament,  the  germs  of  a  system  of  tlieologic 
belief  which  does  not  impress  me  as  being  from 
unaided  human  sources.  No  other  religion  has 
taught  its  equal.  The  sacred  books  of  no  other 
faith  have  contained  its  like.  The  true  way  to 
test  its  character  is  to  imagine  it  blotted  out  of 
human  history.  Blot  out  all  that  it  has  contrib- 
uted to  human  thought.  What  then?  Would 
any  thing  remain  worthy  to  be  compared  with  it  ? 
What  answer  would  Plato  have  given  to  this  ques- 
tion? My  conviction  is,  that  when  Plato  longed 
for  a  teacher  sent  from  heaven,  the  Pauline  theol- 
ogy would  have  satisfied  the  longing.  He  would 
have  said,  "  This  is  the  system  which  my  mind  has 
craved."  Therefore  I  must  believe  that  the  most 
probable,  the  only  probable,  theory  of  its  origin  is 
that,  through  inspiration  of  its  human  authors,  it 
came  from  the  Infinite  Mind. 

4.  I  find,  moreover,  in  these  sacred  books,  evi- 
dences of  a  growth  which  makes  them  one  in 
structure  and  in  aim.  Ideas  are  started  at  the  be- 
ginning which  are  expanded  and  deepened  at  the 
end.  The  Book  of  Leviticus  is  fulfilled  in  the 
Epistles  to  the  Hebrews  and  Galatians.  The  sac- 
rifice of  Abel  finds  its  interpretation  in  the  cruci- 
fixion of  Christ.  One  continuous  chain  of  history, 
of  prophecy,  and  of  moral  teaching,  runs  through 
the  whole.  No  other  succession  of  thought  in  the 
history  of  literature  discloses  such  a  unity  in  the 
result,  or  any  approach  to  it.  It  is  incredible  that 
men  of  different  ages  and  nations,  and  formed  by 


314  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays. 

different  languages  and  types  of  civilization,  should 
have  planned  this  unity  of  construction,  and  exe- 
cuted it  with  conscious  purpose.  Human  produc- 
tions of  successive  ages  do  not  so  lap  over  upon 
each  other,  in  one  consistent  and  consecutive 
design.  Back  of  this  anomaly  in  literature,  there 
must  have  been  one  overruling  and  ins^^iring  Mind. 
That  mind  can  be  none  else  than  the  mind  of  God. 
On  the  same  principle  on  which  I  infer  from  the 
revelations  of  geology,  an  intelligent  and  continu- 
ous design  in  the  construction  of  the  earth's  strata, 
I  must  infer  the  working  of  the  same  mind  in  the 
construction  of  the  Bible.  If  the  one  can  be  the 
work  of  chance,  or  of  impersonal  law,  the  other 
may  be. 

5.  I  find  this  unity  of  the  biblical  structure 
becoming  the  more  marvelous  when  I  discover  the 
central  idea  at  which  the  whole  is  aimed.  Start- 
ing with  the  primeval  fact  of  expiatory  sacrifice,  I 
find  this  volume  developing  through  a  complicated 
ritual,  and  through  the  revelations  of  centuries,  a 
way  of  salvation,  which  is  adjusted  to  the  pro- 
foundest  cravings  of  our  nature  in  the  emergency 
of  sin.  It  answers,  as  no  other  book  has  ever 
done,  the  great  question  of  the  ages,  "  How  shall 
man  be  just  with  God  ?  "  It  appeases,  as  no  other 
religion  has  ever  done,  the  wrath  of  a  remorseful 
conscience.  My  nature  springs  in  response  to  it, 
as  does  that  of  other  men. 

In  this  respect,  it  stands  in  marvelous  accord 
with   the    cravings   of  tlie   human   mind,  yet   in 


Christianity  a  Revelation  from  God.       315 

astounding  contrast  with  all  human  devices  to 
meet  and  satisfy  those  cravings.  Other  religions, 
as  remedial  systems  designed  to  effect  man's  deliv- 
erance from  guilt,  are  stupendous  failures  —  melan- 
choly proofs  of  man's  need  of  a  redemption  which 
he  is  powerless  to  achieve.  Christianity  is  the 
only  religion  which  the  human  conscience  ap- 
proves as  adequate  to  satisfy  its  own  retributive 
sentiment,  while  it  satisfies  the  same  sentiment  in 
the  mind  of  God.  I  can  not  believe  this  way  of 
deliverance  from  the  catastrophe  of  sin,  so  perfect 
in  its  adjustments  to  the  moral  nature  of  both  God 
and  man,  to  have  been  a  human  invention.  It  is 
just  like  God  to  have  devised  it.  It  is  unlike  man. 
I  must  believe  it  to  be  the  thought  of  God. 

6.  I  find,  still  further,  the  process  by  which  the 
biblical  religion  has  grown  to  its  maturity  accom- 
panied by  events  and  revelations  which  are  mir- 
aculous in  their  character.  This  book  is  largely 
historical  in  its  materials.  It  is  history  seen  and 
foreseen.  A  segment  seems  to  be  selected  from 
the  experience  of  mankind,  and  a  divine  plan 
wrought  into  its  development.  The  evidence  of 
this  is  scattered  along  the  line,  from  its  beginning 
to  the  end,  in  these  supernatural  occurrences. 
They  appear  whenever  and  wherever  such  occur- 
rences seem  to  have  been  needed  to  attest  the 
presence  and  agency  of  God.  They  are  of  all 
varieties  in  detail,  from  the  fulfillment  of  a  dream 
to  the  raising  of  the  dead.  The  object  of  them 
was   of  such  transcendent   dignity  as   to  justify 


316  My  Study:  and  Other  Ussays. 

belief  in  miracle.  They  convinced  contemporaries 
that  they  were  sujDernatural  in  their  character.  I 
must  believe,  that,  if  I  had  been  a  witness  to  them, 
they  would  have  convinced  me  of  the  same.  By 
the  laws  of  human  testimony,  I  am  bound  to  believe 
it  now.  They  add  to  other  evidences  all  the  weight 
of  present  miracle  in  proof  that  the  Book  which 
records  them  is  the  Word  of  God. 

7.  The  confirmation  of  my  faith  is  reduplicated 
by  the  singular  resemblance  which  I  discover  be- 
tween the  Christian  religion  and  that  taught  by 
the  phenomena  of  the  natural  world.  The  two 
are  so  remarkably  alike,  that  they  must  be  expres- 
sions of  the  same  creative  Mind.  Each  supports, 
by  its  alliance,  the  credit  of  the  other.  The  mate- 
rial world  is  so  replete  with  analogies,  linking  it 
with  the  revelations  of  the  Scriptures,  that,  in  one 
aspect  of  it,  it  seems  as  if  it  were  created  to  illus- 
trate and  prove  those  revelations.  Both  teach 
the  existence  of  the  same  God.  Both  proclaim  the 
same  attributes  of  His  nature.  Both  affirm  the 
same  sacredness  of  Law.  Both  teach  the  same 
conceptions  of  the  evil  of  sin.  So  far  as  the  reli- 
gion of  nature  goes,  it  covers  the  same  ground 
with  that  of  the  Christian  books.  The  Being  who 
created  the  heavens  and  the  earth  must  be  the 
Being  who  constructed  the  Bible. 

So  far  as  the  Bible  differs  in  its  teachings  from 
the  book  of  Nature,  it  is  but  an  advance,  not  a 
contradiction,  not  an  independent  and  dissimilar 
record.     The  peculiarities  of  the  biblical  religion 


Christianity  a  Revelation  from  God.        317 

are  those  which  the  religion  of  nature  leads  us  to 
expect.  Nature  teaches  man's  need  of  a  revela- 
tion, and  of  such  a  revelation.  Nature  suggests 
what  Christianity  affirms.  Nature  inquires,  and 
Christianity  answers.  Nature  promises,  and  Chris- 
tianity fulfills.  Nature  brings  man  to  the  Christian 
books,  needy,  craving,  expectant :  the  books  sup- 
ply the  need,  satisfy  the  craving,  and  realize  the 
expectation.  This  unity  of  a  dual  revelation  of 
God  is  too  manifest  and  significant  to  be  ignored. 

8.  I  find,  in  following  the  history  of  Christianity 
from  the  completion  of  the  canon  of  its  sacred 
books,  one  thing  more.  My  faith  in  it  as  a  revela- 
tion from  God  is  confirmed  by  the  faith  of  other 
minds.  Mohammed  recognized  an  important  factor 
in  all  human  beliefs,  when  he  said  that  the.  faith 
of  Fatima,  then  the  only  believer  in  his  pretensions, 
strengthened  his  own.  Such  are  the  relations  of 
the  human  mind  to  truth,  that,  what  one  mind 
believes,  another  mind  has,  so  far  forth,  reason  to 
believe.  Applying  this  to  the  history  of  Christian- 
ity, the  confirmation  of  individual  faith  becomes 
overwhelming.  Success  is  not  alone  evidence  of 
truth,  but  it  is  an  immense  tribute  to  the  evidence 
drawn  from  other  sources. 

It  is  much  to  the  purpose,  therefore,  that  I  find 
among  the  believers  of  Christianity  those  who,  by 
proximity  in  time,  were,  of  all  men,  best  qualified 
to  judge  of  the  historic  facts  which  it  affirms. 
Following  them,  I  see  a  long  succession  of  believ- 
ers, not  the  great  and   the  wise   alone,  not   the 


318  My  Study:  and  Other  Essays, 

ignorant  and  the  weak  alone,  not  the  more  impul- 
sive sex  alone,  but  minds  of  both  sexes,  of  all 
ages,  of  every  variety  of  condition  and  culture. 
Children  and  philosophers  alike  have  found  re- 
sources of  moral  strength  in  its  teachings.  It  has 
swayed  a  larger  proportion  of  the  thinking-power 
of  mankind  than  was  ever  given  to  any  other 
system  of  religion  or  philosophy.  It  has  created 
the  most  magnificent  literatures  and  the  most 
advanced  civilization  in  history.  Its  great  ideas 
have  been  central  to  the  most  vital  reforms  which 
men  have  achieved  in  government,  and  in  the 
unwritten  laws  of  social  life.  It  has  accomplished 
what  no  other  religion  has  attempted  in  the  eleva- 
tion of  woman.  It  is,  above  all  others,  the  reli- 
gion of  culture,  of  freedom,  and  of  progress.  The 
faith  men  have  given  to  it  has  thus  proved  itself 
to  be  a  working  faith,  such  faith  as  men  give  only 
to  things  of  supreme  worth.  Its  believers  have 
borne  witness  to  it  in  the  face  of  torture,  and  at 
the  cost  of  life.  Women  have  been  buried  alive 
in  testimony  to  its  truth.  Children  have  been 
crucified  rather  than  to  betray  it.  Every  form  of 
human  testimony  which  a  religion  can  have,  this 
religion  has  commanded  for  ages.  And  this  im- 
mense accumulation  of  human  faith,  which  has 
created  such  magnificent  history,  has  been  given 
to  it  on  the  ground  that  it  is  the  religion  of  a 
Book  inspired  by  God. 

This  confirmatory  evidence  proves  to  me  that  it 
is  what  it  claims  to  be,  —  a  religion  for  the  world 


Christianity  a  Revelation  from  God.        319 

and  for  all  time.  Other  religions  are  local,  national, 
tribal :  this  is  world-wide.  Other  religions  grow 
old,  and  become  effete  :  this  grows  youthful  in  the 
increase  of  its  age.  Others  are  religions  of  the  past : 
this  is  the  religion  of  the  future.  It  has  become 
an  axiom  among  wise  men,  that,  if  we  wish  to 
make  any  thing  live  to  the  end  of  time,  we  must 
identify  it  with  the  religion  of  Christ.  This  is 
just  such  a  revelation  as  I  should  expect  from  a 
benevolent  God  to  a  world  suffering  for  the  want 
of  a  revelation.  It  is  such  as  I  could  not  reasona- 
bly hope  for  from  any  other  source.      * 

In  this  faith  I  have  rested  for  many  years,  with 
a  mental  repose  unbroken  by  an  hour  of  misgiving 
or  wavering.  If  it  is  not  true,  nothing  is  true.  If 
it  is  not  from  God,  nothing  is  from  God.  If  God 
has  not  disclosed  Himself  in  it.  He  has  not  done 
so  in  the  discoveries  of  geology  and  astronomy. 
Nature  gives  no  hint  of  an  intelligent  Creator  and 
a  benevolent  Ruler  of  the  universe,  if  the  Chris- 
tian Scriptures  are  not  the  work  of  an  almighty 
and  omniscient  Author.  The  religion  of  Christ 
and  the  religion  of  Nature  stand  or  fall  together 
in  their  claims  to  the  faith  of  the  human  mind. 


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Wm.  M.  Paxton,  D.D. 

Re^,  H.  S.  Holland. 

LOGIC  AND  LIFE.  With  other  Sermons.  With  an  Introductory  Notice,  by 
President  Noah  Porter.     i2mo.     $1.50. 

The  topics  treated  are  vital  ajid  fundamental ,  the  Trinity,  the  In- 
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Outlook  toward  the  Better  Land. 


Mark  Hopkins,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


THE  LAW  OF  LOVE,  AND  LOVE  AS  A  LAW;   Or,  Chiistian  Ethics.     A  new 
edition  with  important  additions.     lamo.     $i.75. 

SCRIPTURAL  IDEA  OF  MAN.     i2mo.     $1.00. 

TEACHINGS   AND   COUNSELS.     Twenty  Baccalaureate  Sermons,  with  a  Dis- 
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BIBLIOTHECA  THEOLOGICA.     A  select  and  classified  Bibliography  of  Theol- 
ogy  and  General  Religious  Literature.     $3.00. 

zA.  Kiienen,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

NATIONAL  RELIGIONS  AND  UNIVERSAL  RELIGIONS.     The  Hibbert  Lectures 
for  1882.     i2mo.     $>i.5o. 


George  T.  Ladd,  D.D. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SACRED  SCRIPTURE.  A  Critical,  Historical  and  Dog- 
matic  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  and  Nature  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments. 
2  vols.,  8vo.     $7.00. 

"IVe  doubt  whether  during  the  age  there  has  been  a  more  scholarly  and 
masterly  argument  added  to  the  literature  of  Christianity  than  this 
critical  review  of  the  doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture  by  Professor  Ladd^^ — 
Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 

THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  CHURCH  POLITY.     Crown  8vo.     $2.50. 

]ames  Legge. 

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THEOLOGY,  BIBLICAL  LITERATURE,  ETC.  5 

Frangois  Lenormant, 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  HISTORY,  According  to  the  Bible  and  the  Traditions  o{ 
Oriental  Peoples.     From  the  Creation  of  Man  to  the  Deluge.    i2mo.     $2.50. 

James  M.  Macdonald,  D.D. 

THE  LIFE  AND  WRITINGS  OF  ST.  JOHN,  Edited  with  an  Introduction,  by 
the  Very  Rev.  J.  S-  Howson,  D.D.,  Dean  of  Chester.  With  33  illustrations 
and  2  maps.     8vo.     $3.00. 

Selah  Merrill. 

EAST  OF  THE  JORDAN:  A  Record  of  Travel  and  Observation  in  the  Countries 
of  Moab,  Gilead,  and  Bashan,  during  the  years  1875-1877.  With  illustrations 
and  Maps.     8vo.     $2.50. 

Dr.  MerrilPs   contribtition   to   our  knowledge  0/  the  Holy  Land  ivill 
take  its  place  along  side  <?/ Robinson's  Researches. 

Edward  D.  Morris,  D.D. 

ECCLESIOLOGY:  A  Treatise  on  the  Church  and  Kingdom  of  God  on  Earth. 
8vo.     $1.75. 

The  plan  is  a  comprehensive  one,  and  the  discussion  is  marked  by 
candor,  /air7tess,  thoroughness  and  literary  ability  0/ the  highest  type. 

F.  Max  MUller. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  SCIENCE  OF  RELIGION;  With  Papers  on  Buddhism,  and 
a  Translation  of  the  Dliammapada,  or  Path  of  Virtue.     Crown  8vo.     $2.00. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  ORIGIN  AND  GROWTH  OF  RELIGION,  As  illustrated  by 
the  Religions  of  India.     Hibbert  Lectures  for  1878.    Crown  8vo.     ^2.50. 

T.  C.  Murray. 

THE  ORIGIN  AND  GROWTH  OF  THE  PSALMS.     i2mo.     §1.50. 

"  One  of  the  most  important  works  in  the  department  0/  biblical  intra- 
ductioti  and  criticism  that  have  been  produced  in  this  country," — ^The  In- 
dependent. 

O.  P fielder er, 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  APOSTLE  PAUL  ON  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
CHRISTIANITY.     The  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1885.     Crown  8vo.     $2.00. 

Austin  Phelps,  D.D. 

THE  THEORY  OF  PREACHING  ;  Or,  Lectures  on  Homiletics.     8vo.     $2.50. 

MEN  AND  BOOKS;  Or,  Studies  in  Homiletics.  Lectures  introductory  to 
"Theory  of  Preaching."     8vo.     $2.00. 

ENGLISH  STYLE  IN  PUBLIC  DISCOURSE.  With  special  reference  to  the 
usages  of  the  Pulpit,     8vo.     $2.00. 

MY  PORTFOLIO.     Collection  of  Essays.     i2mo.     $1.50. 

MY  STUDY  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS.     i2mo.     $1.50. 

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instinctively  critical,  and  yet  full  of  what  Matthew  Arnold  happily  calls 
*  sweet  reasonableness,^ " 


6  THEOLOGY,  BIBLICAL  LITERATURE,  ETC. 

P,  Le  Page  Renouf. 

THE  ORIGIN  AND  GROWTH  OF  RELIGION,  As  illustrated  by  the  Religion  o 
Ancient  Egypt.     The  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1879.     i2mo.     $1.50. 

Albert  Reville. 

THE  ANCIENT  RELIGIONS  OF  MEXICO  AND  PERU.  The  Hibbert  Lecture: 
for  1884.     i2mo.     $1.50. 

Philip  Schaff,  D.D, 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.  New  edition,  rewritten  and  en 
larged. 

APOSTOLIC  CHRISTIANITY,    A.  D.  i— 100.     Svo,     $4.00. 

ANTE-NICENE  CHRISTIANITY,  A.  D.  100—325.     8vo.     $4.00. 

NICENE  AND  POST-NICE  CHRISTIANITY,  A.  D.  311—600.     #4.00. 

MEDI/tVAL  CHRISTIANITY,  A.  D.  590—1073.     $400. 

"/«  no  other  single  ivork  oy  its  kind  ivith  ivhich  I  am  acquainted  wil 
students  and  general  readers  find  so  much  to  instruct  and  interest  them,^ 
— Professor  Roswell  D.  Hitchcock,  D.D. 

THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST.  The  Miracle  of  History.  With  a  Reply  to  Strausi 
and  Renan,  and  a  Collection  of  Testimonies  of  Unbelievers.     i2mo.     $1.00. 

CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  Studies  in  Christology,  Creeds  and  Confes 
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vance,  Religious  Freedom,  and  Christian  Union,     i  vol.,  Svo.     ^2.50. 

A  discussion  of  many  of  those  vital  questions  which  are  forced  upof 
the  minds  of  thinking  Christians  of  to-day,  by  a  writer  whose  profounc 
knowledge  of  all  phases  of  principles  and  dogmas^  and  of  the  records  Oj 
the  Christian  church,  will  secure  at  once  the  attention  of  all  students  ti 
his  work. 

William  G.  T.  Shedd,  D.D. 

A   HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE.     Two  vols.,  Svo.     $5.00. 

A  TREATISE  ON   HOMILETICS  AND   PASTORAL  THEOLOGY.     Svo.     $2.50 

THEOLOGICAL  ESSAYS.     Crown  8vo.     $2.50. 

LITERARY   ESSAYS.     Svo.     $2.50. 

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THE  ROMANS.     Svo.     $3.00. 

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THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ENDLESS  PUNISHMENT. 


Charles  W.  Shields,  D.D. 


THE  FINAL  PHILOSOPHY,  As  Issuing  from  the  Harmony  of  Science  and  Relig 
ion.  An  Historical  and  Critical  Introduction.  Second  edition  revised 
Svo.     $3.00. 

This  is  perhaps  as  cornprehensive,  and  in  the  good  sense  as  ai7tbitious  c 
treatise  as  has  been  written  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 


THEOLOGY,  BIBLICAL  LITERATURE,  ETC. 


George  Smith. 


THE  CHALDEAN  ACCOUNT  OF  GENESIS.     A  new  edition,  thoroughly  revised 
and  corrected,  with  additions  by  A.  W.  Sayce.    8vo.     $3.00. 


Henry  B.  Smith,  D.D. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST,  in  Chronological  Tables.  Re- 
vised edition.     Folio,     f  5.00. 

FAITH  AND  PHILOSOPHY  ;  Or,  Discourses  and  Essays.     With  an  Introduction 
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Rev.  Newnian  Smyth. 

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THE  ORTHODOX  THEOLOGY  OF  TODAY.  i2mo.  Revised  edition,  with 
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succeed  in  treating  metaphysical  and  philosophical  themes  in  a  fnanner  at 
once  so  forcible  and  so  interesting,^'' — The  Congregationalist. 

Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley,  D.D. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH.  With  maps  and 
plans,  and  a  portrait  of  Dean  Stanley,  New  editio?i  frotn  new  plates,  with 
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he/ore  :  with  so  much  clearness,  eloquence  of  style  and  historic  and  liter- 
ary illtistration,  not  to  speak  of  lear^iing  and  calmness  of  judgment,  that 
not  theologians  alo?te,  but  also  cultivated  readers  generally,  are  dratvn  to 
its  pages.  In  point  of  style  it  takes  rank  with  Macaulay's  History  and 
the  best  chapters  of  Fraud e." — The  N.  Y.  Times. 

LECTURES  ON  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  EASTERN  CHURCH.  With  an  In- 
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8  THEOLOGY,  BIBLICAL   LITERATURE,  ETC. 

Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles. 

From  the  Manuscript  recently  discovered  by  Philotheos  Bryennios,  Metro- 
politan of  Nicomedia,  in  the  Library  of  the  Most  Holy  Sepulchre  in  Con- 
stantinople. The  original  Greek  text  and  the  English  translation  printed  on 
opposite  pages.  Edited  with  a  translation,  introduction  and  notes,  by 
RoswELL  D.  Hitchcock  and  Francis  Brown,  Professors  in  Union  Theological 
Seminary.     A  new  edition,  revised  and  greatly  enlarged.     8vo.     Cloth,  $2.cx>. 

C.  H.  Toy,  D.D. 

QUOTATIONS  IN  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.     8vo.     $3.50. 

In  a  deeply  reverential  tone  and  ivith  perfect  critical  independence 
Professor  Toy  has  done  his  -work.  He  has  followed  good  guides  closely, 
and  has  executed  his  task  "with  equal  diligence,  erudition  and  good  sense. 

H.  Clay  Trumbull,  D.D. 

KADESH  BARNEA.  Its  Importance  and  Probable  Site,  with  a  Story  of  a  Hunt 
for  it,  including  Studies  of  the  Route  of  the  Exodus  and  the  Southern  Bound- 
ary of  the  Holy  Land,  with  maps  and  illustrations.     8vo.     $5.00. 

THE    BLOOD    COVENANT:    A  Primitive  Rite  and  its  Bearings  on  Scripture. 

I  vol.,  i2mo.     Net,  $2.00. 

The  author  proves  by  overwhelming  evidence  in  this  volume  that  there 
have  always  been  certain  primitive,  ineradicable  convictions  founded  in 
the  very  nature  of  man^  which  directly  point  to  and  confirtn  the  Blood 
Covenant  of  the  New  Testarnent. 

John  Tulloch,  D.D. 

MOVEMENTS  OF  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  IN  BRITAIN  DURING  THE  NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURY.     I  vol.,  i2mo.     $1.50. 

"It  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  the  subject  could  have  been  more  intelli- 
gently, broadly,  judiciously  and  coviprehensively  covered,  than  it  has  been 
by  Dr.  Tulloch.  The  student  of  religious  thought  in  this  century  cannot 
afford  to  be  without  this  book." 

Dr.  Gerhard  Uhlhorn. 

THE  CONFLICT  OF  CHRISTIANITY  WITH  HEATHENISM.    Crown  8vo.    $2.50. 

CHRISTIAN  CHARITY  IN  THE  ANCIENT  CHURCH.     Crown  8vo.     $2.50. 

"Dr.  Uhlhorn  possesses  three  necessary  qualifications  for  the  work  he 
has  undertaken,  viz.:  great  learning,  philosophical  grasp  of  the  principles 
which  underlie  the  early  history  of  Christianity,  and  great  beauty  and 
strength  of  style. ^'' 

Henry  J.  Van  Dyke,  Jr.,  D.D. 

THE  REALITY  OF  RELIGION.     i2mo.     $1.00. 

"  The  style  is  so  graceful  and  the  thought  so  clearly  put,  that  the  volume 
is  admirably  adapted  to  be  put  into  the  hands  of  any  educated  person  who 
has  become  confused  or  troubled  by  the  wild  speculations  that  are  current." 
— Presbyterian   Review. 

Marvin  R.  Vincent,  D.D. 

GATES  INTO  THE  PSALM  COUNTRY.    r2mo.    $1.00. 
FAITH  AND  CHARACTER.     i2mo.     fi.50. 

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made  surer." 


